Mickey Spillane

Killer Mine

Chapter One

I got out of the car slowly and stood looking up at the darkened window of the apartment. The cold rain pelted the glass, making it look like a black mirror, an evil, nasty eye in the face of an evil, nasty building. There was something disgusting about it all, something foul and dirty, even unthinkable.

Up there, behind that darkened window, I had to kill myself. Up there I’d know what it would be like to lie dead, know the feeling and sight of featureless expression, the laxity of death.

The gun in my pocket seemed to be too heavy, so I just took it out and crossed the street with it in my hand. The front door was open. So was the inside one. Behind it was the yawning, cavernous mouth of the pitch-black stairway and corridor.

One flight up and to the front.

In my mind I was picturing my face on the floor, half turned into the light, eyes partially opened and jaw slack. All consciousness gone. All conscience gone too. Nothing left. Just dead.

Under my feet the carpet was worn, and each step up brought a musty, aged smell closer. From habit born long ago I stepped over the step that had pulled away from the wall, and as a kid would, counted my way toward the landing.

Four more to go. Then three, two, one and I was there. The door was ten feet away. I didn’t hurry. I wasn’t in a hurry to see what I looked like dead.

So I went slowly and when I had the knob under my hand I cocked the .38 and thought how stupid it all was. And how it started. In a way it had two starting points, but the first was last and the last first. At the last second I was thinking back over the simplicity and stupidity of the whole thing.

It was ten minutes after the kill when I got there. The squad car men were taking statements from the handful who had heard the shots and were trying to make sense from the henna head nighthawk who had seen the car.

The captain was there, an uptown inspector and one of the lab specialists I had seen around a few times. As I got out of the car the photogs were taking their last pics and scrounging for an identification of the dead man.

When I reached the doctor he was just getting up, stuffing the last of his instruments back in his bag. I said, “How’d he get it?”

“Two in the chest and one in the neck, any one fatal.”

“He say anything before he died?”

He shook his head. “Not a thing. I knew he was dying and I tried to bring him around long enough to say something. Couldn’t do it.”

“Tough.”

The doctor drew in his breath and made a wry face. “It was bound to happen.” He scanned the block, taking in the stone faces of the tenements. “Anything can happen here. This is typical.”

I watched him without saying anything, then glanced down at the dead man. There wasn’t much to see. Blood obscured his face, and on the sidewalk like that he looked small and pitiful, not at all important enough to be knocked off in such spectacular fashion. I looked again, frowned, shook my head at what I thought.

Before I could think on it any longer I heard, “Joe... Hey Joe.” Captain Oliver was waving at me, his cigar making a red arc in the night. I walked over and nodded. “This is Inspector Bryan, Joe... Lieutenant Joe Scanlon, sir.”

Bryan stuck out his hand and grabbed mine. He was a big, beefy cop who had come up the hard way and knew all the ropes that went with the job. “Ollie told me about you, Joe. I asked to have you up here.”

“I wondered why the call.”

“You know this area?”

“I was born a couple blocks away. It stinks, but I know it.”

The inspector pulled on his cigarette. “You up on current events around here?”

Before I answered I tried to see what he was getting to but couldn’t make it. I said, “Partly. No details.”

“You know the dead man?”

I squinted at him, then: “You make him?”

“Not yet. We’re waiting on prints.”

The funny feeling came back and I couldn’t shake it off. I turned, went back to the corpse, took a good, close look and stood up. “Forget prints. I can make him.”

“Who is he, Joe?” Oliver asked.

“Doug Kitchen. We grew up together.”

“Positive make?”

I nodded. “Positive. He used to run with my sister. A nice guy. No punk.”

The inspector flipped the butt and said, “Nice guys don’t get shot like that.”

“This one did.”

“Nuts.” His eyes got too cold and knowing.

I said, “My old man got gut shot by a cop on the next corner. He was mistaken for somebody else. The cop thought he had a gun. He was carrying his thermos bottle.”

“So?”

“So Doug was no punk. I knew him. That’s enough.”

“What’s he doing out at four-thirty in the morning?”

“You check the corpse, Inspector?” I didn’t say it nice.

“Briefly.”

“Then maybe you noticed his shipyard badge. He was on the eight to four and coming home.”

“My slip,” Bryan said. He grinned at me then. “Something’s happening around here, Joe. Four crazy, yet well-planned kills in one month. None of them tie in except that they’re all executed in the same area. It doesn’t set right. I think we need a local man to take it on.”

“Me?”

“You lived here. You know the people.”

“Only the old ones. Things change.”

“I know. We want to keep them from changing.”

“It can’t be that big.”

“Four murders, with three from the same gun, can be big,” he said. “It can go to more.” He reached in his pocket and pulled out a lined index card. He handed it to me and held a light on it. “Know the names?”

After I looked at them I said, “I know them.”

“Well?”

“We were kids then. We went to the same school together. I was a hell of a lot older than most of them.”

“But it’s a pattern.”

“Of a sort maybe. The dead men lived within ten blocks of each other.”

“And all killed pretty quick, one after the other.”

I handed the card back. “What do I do?”

Bryan grinned that old cop grin of his. “You take it on.”

“Get off it, friend.”

He gave me that grin again. “You won’t be creamed. You got a girl down the block. It’ll all look pretty natural.”

“I don’t have any girl.”

“You will have before long, mister. She’s a dame you knew as a kid and as far as anybody is concerned around here you’ve met accidentally again and are just picking up all the old pieces.”

“Listen, Inspector, I don’t want any dame messing around.”

“Maybe you will after you’ve seen this one.”

“Oh, for...”

“Her name’s Marta Borlig. Remember her?”

I couldn’t help the face I made. “Sure,” I said disgustedly.

“She’s a policewoman now, but nobody around here knows it. It’s all in the department and you can keep it that way. That’s how you like it anyway.”

“You know a lot about me.”

“We looked long and carefully into this thing, Joe. Now listen. It’s small and slummy but it’s got some nasty overtones. If it happened to all punks or known criminals we could do it routine, but now we got citizens involved who don’t like murder in their back yards. They own stores and work hard. They have the right of complaint. Soon the papers catch on and we’re targets.”

I nodded. “And if I don’t produce, I’m the target.”

“That’s the general idea, Joe.”

“Then go blow it. I won’t play. I don’t feel like being a target. It happened too many times for me to ask for it.”

“You’re being told, Joe.”

“Swell, so I’m told. You want me to pull strings? I’ve been around a long time too.”

“Okay, boy. You call it.”

“Not me, Inspector. Not me. I don’t work into real upper echelons. I’m a cop, plain and simple. But I’m just cop enough to blow off a job I don’t want to get fixed into.”

Captain Oliver said, “Joe...”

It was a long time before I tied myself together, then I grinned and said, “Okay, okay. I’ll sucker myself. I’ll be a real slob.” My grin got bigger then. “But the first boy that doesn’t back me up gets chopped. Quick and hard. Understood?”

“Sure,” Bryan said. “Now stick around. We want that killer.”

“Suppose we hit politics?”

Bryan’s grin was an even bigger one. “No matter who or how,” he said.

Then he walked off and I was standing there by myself.

Downtown was ready for me. The desk sergeant spotted me coming in, got up and introduced himself as Nick Rossi, then had me meet the rest of the shift that was still there. From the curiosity in their faces I could see that somebody had given them a build up on the deal.

The sergeant took my arm and pointed to the room behind the desk. “We have the files drawn and sitting on the desk. There’s more stuff in those six folders than Hoover had on Capone.”

“Six?”

“The Kitchen job was just completed. Bryan said to have it ready by this morning.”

“He didn’t give you much time.”

“Two days, but it was enough. Hell, the guy was clean. Only offense was a drunk charge in ’46. You can get through the clean ones easy.”

“I hope I can do it just as fast.”

“This a big one, Lieutenant?”

“Who knows. You have a look at the reports?”

“Only the index cards when I pulled them. Kitchen’s I went over.”

“Marty...”

“Send Marty in,” I said.

When he went out I closed the door, turned on the fan and sat down. The .38 riding my hip in a Weber rig was uncomfortable, so I sprung it out and laid it on the edge of the desk.

Rossi wasn’t far off in his description of the dossiers. They were thick with everything that included birth, graduation and death certificates. In each were ballistics and kill photos and what little data there was surrounding the crime. That was as far as the police detail went. The rest was a compilation of every event that transpired in a person’s life. A lot of it was familiar to me, and in each one my own name showed up in the pre-report briefs.

Like a cast of characters, I thought. A damn play.

The phone rang and I picked it up and said, “Scanlon, homicide,”

The voice on the other end was deep, yet soft. “Commissioner Arbatur speaking, Lieutenant. Is everything satisfactory there?”

I let out a soundless whistle. This was the hurry-hurry boy on the other end. “Fine, Commissioner. We just got rolling. I’m going over the reports now.”

“That’s good.” He sounded too damn paternal.

I said, “How far up does this thing go?”

“Quite far, Lieutenant. I imagine you are getting the picture?”

“Well... so far each kill has been an individual item for the sheets. No press boy tied them in.”

“Then the gun is our secret.”

“And if it slips out?”

“Panic, Lieutenant. You know that. A killer is having a field day in an area where there are twenty thousand strong pro-administration voters.”

My voice got real edgy. “Tell you what, Commissioner,” I said, “tell the voters to go shove it. You too. I’m after a killer. He’s got only certain potential victims. They’re the ones I’m concerned about. Not voters. Not even you. Got that?”

“Lieutenant...”

“Shove it, Commissioner. Brace me once and I’ll bump the sheets. They’ll tear you apart and I’ll help them. Stay out of my hair.”

Before he could answer I hung up. Outside, a few mouths would be open around the switchboard and in the commissioner’s office the word would go around fast. But I wasn’t kidding. I never did like political appointees who came out of cloak and suit shops.

So now I had a killer and a politician to buck. Great. Just great.

I went back to the reports and started sifting through them. I used the gun as a paperweight to keep the fan from blowing them around and had it in my hand when there was a rap on the door. I yelled, “Come on in.”

And a startling voice said, “Going to shoot me with it, Joe?”

She wasn’t just tall. She was great big. She was honey blonde with the mark of the Valkyrie and her mouth was curved in a moist, lush grin because my eyes swept over her so fast. Her body seemed to want to explode, and only the tailored suit kept it confined.

My mind kept reaching, but I couldn’t quite make her, then she said, “Plainclotheswoman Marta Borlig reporting, Lieutenant,” and the grin got even bigger.

“Well, whatta ya know.” It was all I could think of to say.

“You might tell me how much I’ve grown,” she smiled, “everybody always does.”

“Might say you filled out a little too.”

She walked toward me, her hand out, and I stood up and took it. “Nice to see you again, Joe,” she said. She only had to look up a little bit to meet my eyes.

“So you’re Marty.”

“I’m Marty. But we keep it quiet. Joe. Special detail.”

“Now how the heck can you be kept quiet? You’re bait for anything that’s got eyeballs.”

“I understand you didn’t exactly relish me as an assistant,” she said impishly.

“My memory was twenty years old.” I looked at her again, unable to take my eyes from her. “Little Giggie.”

“Don’t let’s dredge that name up again.” She strode to the aged leather chair by the wall and folded up into it. For a girl so big she had the lazy poise of a fat cat. “I often wondered what happened to you, Joe.”

“Very little.” I dropped into my chair and leaned back. “Two years of college, the force, the war and back on the force again. Study hard, work up the ladder. You know.”

She squinted at me, puzzled. “No home life?”

“No wife, if that’s what you mean. Never had time, I suppose.” I let out a short laugh. “Now, if we’re supposed to be playing footsies, what does your old man do to help the act?”

“Old man?”

“Well, I don’t feel like being a corespondent in a divorce suit, kiddo. I’d sooner he had a script.”

The smile started at the corners of her eyes and reached her mouth a few seconds later. It was a lopsided laugh, full of humor. “I think we can ad lib this one, Joe. You see... I’m sort of a spinster lady.”

“Oh, no,” I said.

“Oh, yes,” she laughed. “I seem to overwhelm people. I scare them.”

“I’m strangely unafraid,” I laughed back.

“That’s because you always were a clod. Clods don’t think, scare easily or get married. You’re a big, ugly clod. How big are you, Joe?”

“Six-two. Weight, two-oh-two, age, up there as you damn well know. How about you?”

“Three inches smaller, four years younger and forty-two pounds lighter.”

“At least it’ll be a big team. We can tear the top off things,”

“Just like the old days,” she mused. “What happened to everybody?”

I stared out the window and shrugged. “Gone. If they had any sense they got out. All eleven kids in my family took off. The three youngest can’t even be located.”

Her eyes had a faraway look in them. “And Larry... do you hear from him?”

“Chief Crazy Horse,” I said softly. “No, he’s gone... someplace. We met once during the war. It was by accident and we were both drunk. You can guess how that was.”

“You were funny brothers, Joe.” She curled her feet farther under her. “Who was the oldest?”

“He was.”

“Chief Crazy Horse,” she repeated. “Those were the days. It was a fight just to stay alive. I can remember when eating was a luxury, not to be taken too lightly.”

“And your family, Marty?”

“The folks died. Young Sed is in college trying hard to be a dentist.”

“Still living in the same place?”

Marta nodded. “For some silly reason I forgot to move. The folks owned the building, you know, and it was convenient with Sed needing funds.” She gave me that big grin again. “That’s our base of operations, I understand.”

“That’s what I hear.”

“I’ll buy a couch so we can sit and talk.”

“Forget it. Get a bigger icebox instead.”

“You sound just like a lousy cop. All stomach and no heart.”

“That’s me, chicken.” I grinned back and said, “Let’s get under these reports. I need some filling in.”

“Yes, sir. Yes, sir, Lieutenant, sir.”

At six we had sandwiches sent up, and at ten we stacked the folders back in the files. I turned the fan off, stuck the .38 back in the Weber holster and said, “Let’s get some coffee. Real china-cup coffee without a cardboard taste.”

Marta put her jacket back on, buttoned it and picked up her purse. “Are we off duty, Lieutenant?”

“Off duty.”

“Then hello, Joe.”

A laugh twisted its way out of me.

“No wonder you went up so fast. You’re a symbol of devotion to service and stark purity.” Then she reached out and took my hand. “But you’re nice, Joe. Where to for coffee?”

“Down the block. It’s the closest.”

Ray made his money from the oversize urn. It seemed to be all he sold, but at least he was in the right location for it. If he didn’t need a table to do his paper work on he wouldn’t have had the one in the back. To him the counter was the thing. We picked up our mugs and went back to the corner table and sat down.

I said, “We didn’t learn much, did we?”

“Not unless you like biographies.” She paused and put her cup down. “Joe... do you make anything of it?”

“Something’s there,” I nodded. “You helped compile those statistics, didn’t you?”

“That’s right. You saw the woman’s touch?”

“It was a little flowery.”

“They asked for that. They wanted every detail. They thought there had to be a background tie-in someplace. There certainly wasn’t any other connection.”

I blew on my coffee slowly, watching her over the rim of it. “Let’s boil it down real quick, Marty. Let’s get one common denominator first.”

She made circles on the table with the wet bottom of the cup. “The gun. The same .38 killed them all.”

“What else?” I asked her.

She was real sharp. She picked up one skipped detail right away. “Single shot each. Fatal almost immediately. Indicates professional killer. Doug Kitchen was the exception. He was shot on the run and the third bullet was merely insurance for the first two. Further professionalism.”

I nodded. “That’s a common detail, but not the denominator. Now involve us too and you’ll see what I mean.”

Her face was impassive a moment, then she got the point. “You and I knew them all, didn’t we.” It was a statement rather than a question.

“Curious, isn’t it?”

“In a way... at least from a coincidental standpoint. It was your neighborhood and still is mine. That’s why we’re on this one.”

“You haven’t hit it, kid. You’ll never make sergeant this way.”

“I don’t get it.”

“Then I’ll wait until you do,” I told her.

“Smart guy,” she said. “Just because you can pull rank.”

I grinned at her. “Now you sound like old Giggle herself,”

Her eyes flashed quickly. “Listen...”

I waved a finger at her. “You watch it, kid, or I’ll start issuing orders. Then you’ll have to do whatever I tell you.”

The laughter came back in her face again. “Like what?”

“You’d be surprised at what I might order you to do.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised at all,” she grinned back. “Just don’t leave the lights on.”

“Damn dames,” I grunted. “Even when you’re policemen you can’t forget you’re dames.” Then we both laughed and got up and split the check and went back to the office.

Chapter Two

I looked across the desk at Marty, wondering at the size of her and the wild chestnut color of her hair, wondering why such a broad should go cop when she could lay the world at her feet with the big look. The resiliency of youth whom so many desired had been replaced by the lushness of maturity, whose desire was superior, and only obtainable by certain few.

I was grinning when she looked up and said, “You’re philosophizing. I can tell.”

“How?”

“You look smug.”

“It doesn’t happen often. Let me enjoy the moment.”

Her smile started gently, then broadened when some subtle intuition gave her an insight into my thoughts.

“Let me,” she said softly. “Please?”

The seconds that passed were years going back and little things coming forth.

“What are you thinking?”

“When you were the Big Pig because you wanted to be the cop and Polack Izzie and you got into the fight over me.”

“We didn’t fight over you.”

“You did, friend,” she reminded me. “It was night and I was coming home from the library when he jumped me next to the Strauss store.”

I laughed because I remembered all too painfully. “He beat the hell out of me, chicken.”

“Sure he did,” she chuckled, “but I got away. I never did thank you, did I?”

“Never.”

“So thanks.”

“Don’t bother. We didn’t fight over you. He ran over my foot with that old Packard 120. You happened along at the right time.”

“Don’t be modest, Joe. You fought over me.”

“Old Giggie?”

“Well... maybe you knew how I’d wind up.”

Both of us laughed at that one day so long ago. The laugh was real short, then she bent her head down-into the reports again and I looked at the wild chestnut hair and felt real funny inside.

Real funny.

Both of us playing guns for public money and winding up on the same deal.

Sergeant Mack Brissom rapped on the door and walked in, grinning at the comfortable little scene. “Kind of late, ain’t it?”

I shrugged. “Got to get it done. You have the rest of the stuff?”

He tapped the envelope. “It’s all here. A lot of speculation, but it can count. You know how those things are.”

“Sure.”

“You want me to brief you?”

“Yeah, but in brief. You know? Sit down.” I leaned back in the chair and folded my hands behind my head. “Let’s hear it.”

Mack bit the end off a cigar, spit the piece into his palm and lit up. It stunk, but it was part of the mores of the place.

“Well, you know the guys who were knocked off. René Mills, Hymie Shapiro, ‘Noisy’ Stuccio and Doug Kitchen.”

“I knew them when we were kids.”

“You see the ballistics report on Kitchen?”

I shook my head no.

“Same gun, so now the heat is really on. Bryan says hurry-hurry. Anyway, they all got rap sheets except this Kitchen guy and on him there’s nothing. The rest were backtracked down to when they were still playing hookey, but if you can tie them in to each other you’re better’n I am. You went over the earlies, didn’t you?”

“In detail.”

“Make anything?”

I shook my head again. “Nothing there but a familiarization course. What’s the word from outside?”

“Well...” He reached forward and picked a sheet from the envelope and scanned it quickly, then flipped it back.

“McNeil... he’s on the beat there... he knew them. René Mills and Stuccio had been sharing a pad a month earlier, then René hit a daily double and moved out. McNeil figured Mills was running numbers when he was bumped and he knew damn well Noisy was getting bread by pimping for a couple of tomatoes he had on the top floor over old Papa Jones’ store. But lately, nobody could tie them in. Both had been playing it quiet enough to be let alone.”

“No talk along the street?” I asked him.

“Hell, who’ll talk? The few who would, had nothing to say. But anyway, that’s your bit now. You’re real home town, huh?”

Marty looked up and grinned. “Both of us.”

“Yeah, I heard,” he said. Then he looked at me and winked through the haze of smoke. “It pays to be brass. That it does. A chick like this in the department and they yank her all the way across town to be your buddy. Cripes, you shoulda seen the partners they gave me. Old Grootz, fat as a pregnant cow... Billy Menter who could say ‘yup’ and ‘nope’ and that was all, and one time a matron who looked like my aunt in Linden, but at least that only lasted one day.”

“I’m going to stretch this one out,” Marty said. I glanced at her and grunted. So did Mack. “Why not?” she said seriously. “Until now it was all juvenile. Wouldn’t even put me out in the field where the dips were working.”

Mack and I looked at each other and laughed.

“What’s so funny about that?” she demanded.

“You,” I told her. “I can see you trying like hell to be inconspicuous. Anyway, baby, you were good enough to save for the big one.”

Mack laughed again and Marty made a face at me.

I said to Mack, “We’re going to play this one on the cool side. They laid out the pattern before they gave it to me, and it might work. I’d sooner go after this chappie through regular channels, but someplace along the line politics got involved and you know district captains can raise a stink, specially when he can pull five thousand votes.”

“Well, it happens. What can you do?”

“Marty still lives in the old neighborhood. Nobody knows she’s in the department. In that neighborhood it doesn’t make for a good rep.”

“I know.”

“So I court her.” I grinned at Marty and she smiled back.

“Things can get mighty interesting in the line of duty,” Mack said.

In a stage whisper Marty said, “I hope!” and we all laughed.

For some crazy reason all the tension was gone and I had a fat lazy feeling like I used to have back on the beat when it was a hello to everybody and the kids still played stickball and not switchblades and you liked your job, even at the end of the day when your feet hurt but you weren’t really tired,

“So what do you think, Mack?”

“It’s a toughie. There’re nineteen stoolies who put in their two bits out of which we got nothing. The only tie-in is that they were knocked off with the same gun, presumably in the same hand. All neat jobs, no stray shots and strictly big-time pro. The slugs were all .38 specials out of the same box. The lab could check the lube left on each slug.”

“That’s calling it.”

“But that’s all they’re calling, Joe. You can go through those reports all week and still be out in the bleachers.”

“It figures. That’s why they’re making a damned federal case out of it.”

Mack got up and tapped the inch of ash off his cigar into the tray on my desk. “You be careful, Joe. I don’t like this one.”

“I don’t either.”

“You know why?”

“No. Clue me,”

“Some rumbles been coming out of there lately. That Phil Borley extortion thing. Nobody knew he had left Chi until he muffed this operation here. Then that mob business. Nothing’s come of it yet, but the word is that a few of the uptown crowd have been hanging around in strange places. Those lads are working close to the politicos. The campaigning starts early nowadays.”

Across from me, Marta frowned in concentration, taking it all in.

“If these kills are inside an organization,” Mack said, “you’re pushing a big one. If they’re outside, the organization won’t like their field having a light turned on it and might try to clean up the deal themselves. Either way, you can get caught in a pocket.”

I grinned at him. “Don’t worry so much. I’ve been around some.”

Mack nodded. “Okay, you know what you can do with that reputation of yours. Always some punk ready to take you on from behind. What I don’t like is you going it alone. It just ain’t S.O.P.”

“Neither is this case.”

“You been assigned any help?”

“Just Marty. The rest gets played by ear.”

Marta leaned back and crossed her arms. “We can always call for the beat cop.”

“Great,” Mack said. “Anyway, if it gets too cozy, a few of us who know that strip can hang around in our spare time.”

“Thanks. I might need something like that.”

“Sure. You yell. Now, anything you want from our section?”

“I don’t think so.” I tapped the envelope on the desk. “Thanks for this.”

He winked, waved at Marty and sauntered out. On the wall the clock passed the midnight mark and I said, “Enough, kid. Let’s shut up shop.”

“We’re on it, then?” When I nodded she added, “Now what?”

I said, “Now the courtship begins,” and leered at her the best way I knew how.

We waited until Saturday to start the pitch. We let Marta get it going by passing the word to old lady Murphy upstairs and Mr. Clehoe who ran the corner delicatessen that she had met me near where she worked and saw me a couple of times for lunch. It didn’t take long for the news to get around that Marta had picked up the pieces with old Pig Scanlon, the cop, and already she was getting dirty looks from anybody at all who had been in the can.

Normally she had Saturdays off, but spent the morning taking a course in Spanish. But as far as the street knew she had a five-and-a-half-day week in an office someplace, so nothing was out of order when we came out of the subway and started toward her place.

At the corner where my old man was shot down I touched her arm and we stopped so I could look around. It had been a long time. Many moons. Many suns. I looked up the street and knew instinctively what lay behind every dirty brownstone front and the way the clothes looked hanging in the alleys behind and could smell the pigeons on the roof.

Resurrecting memories of youth comes easy. You can slip back fast to the old days when life was hot pavement, new sneakers and a nickel in your pocket. The guy who died on the beach at Anzio is a pug-nosed guinea again and he’s your best friend. The kid with the lisp next door died up at Ossining two years ago for a gang kill, but for the moment you’re ten once more and sharing leads in the class play. The mother of the girl whom you first loved on a sultry rooftop and fought for in the streets below sobs softly at night because the girl is rich and notorious, yet still beautiful despite the channels of whoredom she swam to reach her port of money. But you think of her as lovely, and at fifteen endowed with all those things important to men and boys. You think of Giggie and smile because she was bigger than you were and tougher than most of the kids and sure as hell slated for the school at Hudson if she got caught with you on a stamp into the Hub’s turf two blocks over. You remember old Larry whom they used to call Chief Crazy Horse and Sam Staples they called Bad Bear when the gang crawled around the eroded rocks playing Indians on the West Side of Central Park.

And I was the Pig. Big Pig they called me because I always wanted to play the cop.

Mischelle Stegman, the hood from the corner, would laugh when they hosed me about wanting to be in the blue uniform, then one day I saw him mug old Jew Jenkins and take off with his roll and I was the only one who would talk up. Two days after he was subpoenaed, Stegman’s buddies took me out of my hallway and went to teach me a lesson. The cop on the beat came along and chewed two of them up and the one who was about to belly-hook him with a switcher suddenly had his back broken by a kid jumping from the stoop railing.

Me.

The slobs shot their mouths off after that, but nobody touched me. They saw to that down at the precinct house.

Then in time it was me on the beat where I had wanted to be for so long. I was off the street and everything looked good. Until the war came. But that passed too, and for a while things were changed. You work, you study, you take tests, a couple of lucky breaks and a couple you sweated for make you a big one on the force with a crazy reputation of hating the politicos and the chiselers and the punks and everybody is scared shitless of you because they can give you nothing and you can slice them every which way. Suddenly the caucus room boys with the thick cigars and thicker bankrolls come to you simpering and smiling because you’re a big one now who doesn’t give a yell for the cloak and suiters or the guinea mafia or ignorant spies or the dutchmen or the micks or S.N.C.C. or any of them who play it sidewise because they’re strictly all alike in the rule book. Strictly.

Marta said, “Still the same?”

I snapped out of it, realizing that a frown had pulled my eyes into a tight squint. “Essentially.”

“You’ve never been back?”

“I’ve never wanted to come back.” I looked at her and took her arm. “I didn’t know about you, Giggie.”

“Would it have made a difference?”

I shrugged, but she knew it might have and grinned back. Then we waited for the light to change again and crossed over to the slop chute everybody called Donavan’s Dive.

You smelled Donavan’s place before you got inside. It had oldness about it, a hangover from the speakeasy days, an air-conditioned mustiness of stale smoke and staler beer. The side entrance let you into a dining room of sorts, the front one directly to the bar.

There wasn’t much room at the bar, just one space about a foot wide where you could sidle in to pick up a drink. The wise guy who saw me steer Marta toward it scrunched around to block it up neatly and the back bar mirror showed a couple of grins.

When the wise guy suddenly and quietly tried to scream from the short hook to the kidney and spilled his drink across the mahogany, the grins stopped. I pulled him away and he staggered to the wall where he tried to catch his breath.

Marta smiled nicely, the guy next to her gave up his stool and we each had a big, cool Pabst in a clear glass mug that made the trip across town worth waiting for.

When the surly faced bartender came back to catch all the details I knew it had come.

It was big and fat with a cigar stuck in the middle of his mouth and his pants carried low under his belly. Somebody had knocked his nose out of line a long time ago, but must have paid for it the hard way. This was the voice of local authority. This was the man. With a derby he’d have been the perfect caricature of the old-style ward heeler. Today they call them captains.

He said, “Hey, cop,” and when I looked around he shifted the cigar with a tongue roll to the other corner. “You looking to get your badge lifted, you’re in the right place. You know that?”

I grinned at him and felt Marta touch my arm lightly. “No, I didn’t know that.”

One big thick forefinger came up to emphasize the point against my chest. It’s one of the things I can’t stand at all. It’s something a hell of a lot of people learned never to do. The second he touched me I grabbed, twisted and broke it straight back without moving his arm and before the amazement ever reached his face I hooked him one under the chin and he bit the damn cigar right in half.

I tapped Marty. “Who is he, sugar?”

Before she could answer the bartender said, “Al Reese, mister. You bought trouble. He’s important. This is his district.”

I said, “Oh,” and grabbed hold of Al Reese’s shirt. “You know me, Reese?”

He tried to bring back the sneer when I slapped him. It was a nice, loud slap, but I had the heel of my hand in it and his knees jerked.

“I asked you something.”

This time he nodded.

“Say it loud, fat man. Let everybody hear you.”

“Lieutenant Scanlon.”

“Louder.”

It came out louder and hoarser.

“You know what I think of slobs like you?”

I was getting the hand ready when he nodded again.

“Anybody pulls any crap on me like this again and I’ll brown you all out. I come from this place. I know the rules. When I don’t like ’em I make up new ones. Maybe you played with some of the easy boys too long. Don’t try it with me.”

I let him go and he staggered away, clutching his hand against his chest. Both sides of our spot at the bar were empty now. Down the other end one guy in a grey suit was watching with amused, knowing eyes. Loefert, from the uptown mob.

Marty took a small sip of beer and touched her mouth nervously. “That was rough, Joe.”

“You’ve seen it before, kid.”

“But now you’re department.”

I grunted and picked up my brew. “Lesson one. Don’t be afraid of letting them know who you are. They move first... then you move, only do it harder. Once these pigs get the bull on you, neither the department, nor the uniform, nor the gun is any good.”

“But...”

“We’re not in happy town, kid. This isn’t a cross section of normal middle class morality.”

“I live here, Joe. So do... did you.”

“Sure, and now for lesson two. We’re on a job and you’re in the department too so stop moralizing.”

For a moment she stiffened, then when she saw me laughing at her in the mirror she smiled back. “I’ve been in juvenile too long.”

“I know. You’ve had to be nice to everybody. You’ve forgotten your heritage here though. In these parts it’s the tough guy who has all the friends. Remember?”

“Too well.”

“Come on, finish your beer and let’s go up to your place. The icebox full?”

“It’s a refrigerator, and yes it’s full.”

“Then let’s go make like a romantic couple should.”

Her eyes brightened mischievously. “What’ll we do?”

“Eat, of course,” I said. “Hell, we’re cops, aren’t we?”

Chapter Three

I stood by the window thinking of my own comfortable bachelor quarters overlooking the Drive. The sun’s passage over the canyon of the street had been brief, and now it lay in deepening shadows.

Behind me, Marty put the last of our notes away and poured from the fresh pot of coffee. She handed it to me silently, then watched the scene with me for a while.

“Thinking it’s pretty terrible?” she asked.

“No. Just that it’s three dimensional. From here the city is sight, sound and smell.”

She shrugged and nodded. “But it’s home.”

“I prefer it a little more antiseptic.”

“You’re an old man and set in your ways.”

I looked at her with the coffee halfway to my mouth. “Like hell!”

“Oh?” Those wild Irish eyes of hers went up and down me intently. “Most bachelors are out sowing. Not you. A fancy apartment, your own car and money in the bank. Duty comes first. For fun you take on extra assignments.”

“How did...”

“I asked around, old buddy. Your friends told me.”

“So?”

“So you’re an old man and set in your ways. No real fun. No broads.”

“Listen, I got broads. I got...”

“You got mad,” she laughed.

Then I stopped and laughed too. “Well, like I said, it’s been pretty antiseptic. The things I wanted on a cop’s salary you have to make the hard way. You can do it easy too, but that puts you in another class I’m not interested in.”

“They told me you were offered some fancy jobs.”

“Unfortunately, then I just plain wanted to be a cop.”

“Police officer.”

“Police officer hell,” I said. “That’s for the upper etch bugheads who hate honesty. I like to be called a cop. You know why? Because that’s what I am. Somebody yells, what do they yell? ‘Call the cops’ they yell. Not ‘call a police officer.’ You know what I am to those snot-nosed JD’s? I’m a cop, that’s what. Damn it, a police officer wouldn’t last ten minutes outside Traffic Division with that tag.”

“Okay, copper, okay. So I’m sorry. You ought to see your face, it’s all screwed up red and tight and if I wasn’t a broad you’d cream me, huh?” Her laugh was deep and throaty again and took all the annoyance away. I shook my head because I let her get me all riled up and turned and stared out the window again. Old Giggie. Jeepers. She put her coffee down and walked away.

On the street half a dozen kids fought for stickball right in the middle of the road. They hung up two cars, but the drivers were too intent in the fight to bother blowing their horns. It ended quickly as they always do, then the cars crawled by and the game started.

Marta came out of the bedroom then. The grey tailored suit was gone and now she was in a sheer green thing that seemed to shimmer in the light, and what she did to her hair changed her face somehow and I had to wonder where all the beauty came from. She was full and proud in the breasts, with a casual way of standing with one leg partly thrust out that accentuated the incredible curve of her hips. Like that, the fabric of the dress ran flat across her belly, yet made you aware of other hidden curves still more lovely.

“You like?” she asked.

“I like,” I said. “What’s it for?”

“To give you a good reason for being here.”

“It was good enough before,” I grinned.

She walked closer, swirled around so I could see the overall effect. “But better now, huh?”

I nodded. “Better now.” Then I grabbed her and pulled her close so I could smell the sweet scent in her hair and she was warm and hard against me, her fingers biting into my arm. Her mouth touched my mouth, warm and moist, the tip of her tongue soft and searching, saying hello after such a long, long time, a gentle touch because we were still new, even though very old.

I held her away and she smiled. “Nutty, isn’t it?”

“Yeah. I’m not sure I understand it.”

“Like this is nice work,” she grinned.

I said, “On the job training.”

She gave me that throaty laugh again, touched my lips with her finger and reached for her purse. She said, “We ready?”

I looked at my watch. It was a quarter to six and there was no time like the present. I nodded and said, “Let’s go.”

We picked Tony’s Pizza for supper because René Mills had made it his special eatery. Nothing fancy about it, but Tony would put anybody from the neighborhood on the cuff. The old man remembered me with a black-faced nod not intended to be personal, but prohibition raids had long ago soured him on any kind of cop.

Fat Mary came over beaming and smiling, then patted me on the head like she used to do when she gave me a slice of hot Italian bread, thick with butter, for running errands for her.

When the sausage and peppers came Mary dished it up herself and sat down opposite me, nodding with satisfaction as we ate. She liked to see people eat.

She said, “Now, Joe, you come back to see thees nice girl, no?” She didn’t let me answer. “That is good. Very good. Long time thees nice girl should be marry. How to have the babies without the marry, no?”

“Well...”

She waggled a fat finger at me. “No. You marry first! Like I tell...”

But Tony broke it off. “Like you tell nobody. You let them eat, okay?”

Mary laughed so that her chins jiggled, then she reached over and patted my hand. “You a good boy, Joe. Now, how about rest of your family, eh? That crazy brother of yours still around?”

“I haven’t seen him in a long while, Mary.”

“Oh, he a funny one. Remember when he make believe he hang that kid and I scream and fall down the steps?”

Marta looked at me, puzzled. “The Davis kid,” I explained. “They made this harness to go under his clothes, but it looked like he really was hung.”

“Oh.”

Mary’s face drew into a stern grimace. “Not so funny yet. On the back I am all black and blue. Good thing I am there to see.”

“Why?”

“Thees things they made to hold him up. One broke and he really was hanging.” She shuddered. “For minute his face get red, his tongue come out. I take him down and I give that brother of yours one hell of a sock. Make his nose bleed. I was going to tell your papa, but he cry so I say nothing.”

“First time I heard about that part of it.”

“What was his name, what you called him? Something Indian.”

“Chief Crazy Horse. A Sioux, I think. Big war leader under Sitting Bull.”

“Oh, I tell you plenty things from them days.”

Behind the bar Tony said, “Yak, yak. You let them eat, woman.”

I winked at the old man and he scowled back friendly-like. Mary looked hurt, so I said casually, “See where René Mills died.”

“No die.” She hunched her heavy shoulders in a shrug. “He was killed.”

“Yeah. Shot. Lots of that going on around here,”

“Always trouble, Joe. You know that.”

“René making it big here?” She understood me, but waited a long moment before acknowledging it. “Not so big like he talked always. Big shot, that guy. Always talking about them... them shooters. His friends. Huh!”

“He always had a big mouth,” I said. “Who’d he say his buddies were?”

Her typical Italian gesture was eloquent. “Who cares? Tough guys he likes. Always somebody in the papers who got trouble is his pal.”

“He didn’t have any loot around when he died.”

“Always broke, that one. He pays his bills. Sometime take a month, but he come across.”

“You’re lucky,” I said.

“What the cops do about it, eh, Joe?”

It was my turn to shrug. “He’s on the books. Something’ll turn up.”

Her wise black eyes looked into me. “Like you maybe?”

I put down my fork. “Mary, I’m brass. I’m a lieutenant. You think I’m going to do legwork in this part of town?”

“So?”

“So let ’em shoot each other up all they want to. I’m going to make a pass at this mouse here and try to snag her out of this place.”

Mary said, “Some mouse,” and Marta jabbed me with her fork under the table. “Joe, no foolin’. You gonna do somethin’ ’bout René?”

“What for?”

“You cop. We pay taxes and...” From behind the bar Tony growled in his usual way. Mary gave him a dirty look.

I said, “The cops were here and asked all the questions, weren’t they?”

“Sure. They come. They ask. We tell. But what? Who knows from what, Joe? From a kid, like you, I know that one. He’s what they call a sharpie. So what else?”

“Nothing else. What else is there?”

She drummed her fingers on the table top and pursed her mouth in thought. Then her finger went up dramatically. “Wait. I think of something.” With a practiced motion she squeezed her bulk out of the seat and walked across the room with that peculiar lightness you sometimes see in fat people. A hurried talk in Italian with Tony got her yelled at, but she yelled back, then Tony rummaged around some papers beside his cash register and handed them to her. When she came back she laid them down and spread them open.

Marta and I looked at each other briefly. Mary said, “He left them here couple of nights before he get killed.”

One was a four-color brochure on new model Caddies. The other was the same, but for the Chrysler and it was folded back to the page showing the luxurious Imperial.

Mary was looking at me with raised eyebrows, waiting. I said, “He sure was thinking big, that’s for sure.”

She nodded. “This night he leave thees things, he pay his bill.”

“How much?”

“T’ree hundred fifty somethin’.”

“That’s pretty steep to go, isn’t it?”

“You know Tony,” she said. “Most of that thees René drink. Tony, he buy him plenty booze and bring it to his room just before that.”

“Oh?” I didn’t want to push her.

“Tells me bunch of guys up there. They don’t let him in. Just take the stuff and tell him pay later. You know Tony.”

“So they were playing cards maybe,” I said.

“Sure, maybe,” she said and all her curiosity left.

I paid the bill, said so-long to Mary and Tony and took Marta out of there. She was all primed for a big talk, but inside, couldn’t say anything that might have official sounding overtones. Now she wanted to talk and I wouldn’t tell her anything. I just walked beside her grinning to see how much she could take.

We hit a couple of bars then, saying hello here and there, finding some of the old bunch still around. I made no bones about being a cop, but by then the news had preceded us anyway so it didn’t make much difference. But one look at Marta and they knew I had a good reason to be around without wanting to get involved in police work. The winks were big and broad and I accepted them with a wink back.

It was a great cover. She spiked me with her damn heels a few times for pulling that stuff, but it was still real great cover.

At eleven-thirty I took her home, closed the door behind us and ducked the backhand she threw at me. I said, “You’re supposed to use Judo.”

“Oh, Joe!” But she had to smile. “I’m never going to ever be able to hold my head up around here any more.”

“Why? You knew all those people.”

“But I’m not a saloon jumper. Golly...”

“So we’ll teach the old dog new tricks.” This time the backhand got me before I could move out of reach.

Marta laughed, shook her head and said, “I’ll go make coffee and you can tell me how we’re doing. That is, if I’m allowed to know.”

I said okay and sat down.

“Now tell me,” she said.

“Not tell, sugar. Speculate. All we did was get seen around. All we speculate on is René Mills. Apparently he had some loot or was expecting some.”

“He always looked the part. I never saw him in anything other than the latest styles.”

“Sure,” I agreed, “and he paid his bills. Those guys could always go that far rolling drunks. What gets me were those auto ads. Who needs a car around here? The kids would make a playground out of it in one day. Taxis and subways are too easy.”

“He could have been just looking.”

“Those folders were worn. He did a whole lot of looking.”

“Somebody else could have had them first.”

“Uh-huh,” I agreed, “so we find out.”

It took ten minutes. With a half a dozen calls I found the Caddie and the Imperial dealer who remembered Mills.

Marta said, “Well?”

“He did the asking himself. He sounded serious.”

“René had something going for him then.” She walked over with coffee and a plate of Danish and held them out.

“Who knows? He could still be playing the big shot.”

We finished the snack and I looked at my watch. It was a quarter after twelve and I was beginning to drag. I got up, stretched and reached for my hat. Marta said, “Joe... it’s been fun, really.”

I grinned at her. “Work isn’t supposed to be fun.”

Her eyebrows went up. “You unhappy?”

“No. Come here.” She came into my arms with a smile and a soft little sound and a way of doing it that was as if we had been doing it all our lives. We seemed to touch all over at once, then when the hot fire of her mouth engulfed mine, the touch became a demanding, writhing pressure and when I pushed her away she shuddered briefly, then opened her eyes.

“Little Giggie,” I said.

“Big Giggie,” she reminded me. “Don’t do me like that or you’ll get bitten.”

“Never bite your superior officer,” I said.

“Then watch yourself,” she smiled. “Tomorrow?”

“In the afternoon. I have to go downtown first.”

“You know you’re leaving me in an awful mess,” she said with a sultry grimace. Then she looked at me and grinned broadly when I stepped back.

I opened the door. “That makes two of us,” I said.

On the way to the corner I saw Benny Loefert across the street talking to some chippy. I walked over and they stopped talking while I was still in the middle of the street. I said, “Turn around and put your hands against the wall, punk. You know the pose.”

The arrogance in his eyes turned to little snakes of hate and he spit, then turned slowly. I made it faster with a shove of my hand. A handful of up-laters stopped to watch and you could hear the whispers and sense the heads in darkened windows of the tenements.

I patted him down to his shoes, made him show his identification then gave him at ease. He said, “What’s that for? You know I don’t go loaded.”

“Ex-cons still in the punk business are always suspicious characters, punk. What’re you doing here?”

“I got a broad.”

“Who?”

He waved his thumb at the gum chewer and her eyes darted back and forth between us. “Let’s see you shake her down, copper.”

“Sure.” But first I slapped him one across the mouth then gave him another across the ear. “That’s for the smart mouth, punk. Try it again.”

Some of the people watching grumbled, but just as many laughed. They didn’t like punks either. I turned to the broad and pointed to the purse in her hand. “Get it out, kid, let’s see it all. Who you are, where you live, the works.”

“Listen...!”

“You ever do time, kid?”

Her eyes said yes. Her eyes said they didn’t want to do any more, either. She opened the purse and showed me her Social Security card that gave her name as Paula Lees and a receipted bill for a room a block over. I knew what she was and the business she was in but didn’t push it at all. When I told her okay and to put it away her eyes said thanks and gave Loefert a dirty look.

By tomorrow everybody would have the story. Loefert was part of big time moving downtown, but they weren’t snot nosing this badge. When I moved them on I stood there a minute, said to hell with the subway and grabbed a cab cruising by.

It only took fifteen minutes to change the sight and sound and smells. I opened the door of my apartment and it was like being in a different world.

Chapter Four

After breakfast in the cafeteria near headquarters, I went up to my desk and started clearing out details that had been laying over. In a way it was good to be on a single assignment. You had a chance to shove unfinished business on somebody else for a change, and for once you could devote yourself to thinking along a straight line.

Close to noon Mack Brissom gave his usual rap and opened the door. He had two containers of coffee, put them on the desk and settled down with a tired sigh.

I said, “What’re you doing in on Sunday?”

“That Canadian business. It’s in Homicide now.”

I frowned, shook my head, but couldn’t remember it.

“That armored car stickup in Montreal. One and half million.”

“Why have we got it?”

Mack grunted and reached for his coffee. “Not we. Me. You’re the fair-haired boy who don’t have to work. The two guards are dead. Both the hoods who hit the truck were tracked to the Falls, crossed over into Buffalo and are supposedly heading toward New York.”

“So catch ’em. You know who they are?”

“We know one. Charlie Darpsey. Used to be with the Brooklyn crowd. One of the guards was an ex-cop with a retirement job and recognized him from police fliers some years back. He lived long enough to pass out the name.”

“Work, slob,” I grinned.

He tipped the container up, swallowed noisily, then put it back. “Like you?” He was holding a smile back.

“What?”

“I happened to be in the Inspector’s office earlier. Seems like you touched the wrong funny bone somewhere. The squawk was loud.”

“It didn’t reach me.”

“For a while, I don’t think it will. They’re waiting to see if that kind of action gets any results.” He leaned back and felt for a smoke in his pocket. He was out and looked at me disgustedly a second because I couldn’t help him any. Then: “How’s it going?”

“Nothing yet, you know how it goes. I saw Benny Loefert around there.”

Mack nodded. “That’s what I came in to tell you about, couple of pigeons reported in that Loefert, Beamish, Will Pater and Steve Lutz have been moving around.”

“High-priced guns?”

“Yeah. All but Lutz took rooms in the area. They’re giving the place real class.”

“I shook Loefert down last night. Gave him a little bang to set him straight.”

“We heard about that too. Beat cop picked it up. You meet him yet?”

“No.”

“Nice kid. Just off probationary duty. Turns in reports like they’ll be kept for posterity. Detailed? Hell, he’d even turn in the number of spit marks on the sidewalk if he thought it necessary.”

“He’ll make out. We were all like that,” I said.

“Sure.” He got up and picked his container off the desk. “We’re going to keep track of the uptown lads. If anything comes through we’ll pass it along.”

“Right. And thanks for the coffee.”

He winked and left. I finished filing the papers, marked them for proper distribution and called for Cassidy to take care of them. Then I phoned Marta and told her I’d be over about two and to have lunch ready. She called me a housemaid-hugging flatfoot and hung up.

Sunday on the street was a day of truce. The week had been fought to a smashing climax on Saturday night and now the troops had withdrawn and cleared the field for a little while. But the signs of battle were still there, the bright flakes of broken bottles, the vomit splashes by the walls, a garbage can on its side in the curb.

Traffic was negligible, but the kids had that uneasy Sunday feeling that couldn’t make up into a stickball game. The young girls were out, purses swinging, jaws chewing, taking this one day to prove their respectability while their opposites tried hard for masculine worldliness with smelly vestibules and dirty stoops for a background. None of it came off. It was still a battlefield.

The bars had opened at one and so far were almost empty. The three I stopped in had just been mopped down and smelled of furniture polish. The hell with the house, but take care of that bar! In each place I asked if Al Reese had been in, and when they said no I told them to pass the word I was looking for him and was going to beat the crap out of him when I found him. I did him a little dirty by hinting that he was a stoolie of sorts, and in that neighborhood even a rumor like that can get a guy in pretty deep water. But at least they were taking it right. I was the tough cop came back to the street where he used to live to see a broad he grew up with. So long as everybody stayed in line, what they did was no business of mine. None at all. Anybody plays it wise, they get rapped and I could make it stick. They were getting to know that part in a hurry. That’s the way they had it figured, and that’s just what we wanted them to think.

At five minutes of two Marta opened the door for me and I could smell lunch on the table. This time she had on a dress with a billowy skirt and regular whore shoes. Only on her the combination looked great.

We ate without saying much, went out to a crummy movie house and saw a picture we had both seen a year ago. At seven we had supper at Smith’s Bar and Grill, then went back to the neighborhood for a few beers before calling it a night

Two days and the pattern was working out The word ran like a swift river in those parts and wherever we stopped conversation stopped too. Words were guarded and eyes could evade mine for no reason except I was cop. On the street the lushes and the panhandlers would throw a halfhearted ingratiating smile, then scurry away quickly.

On the way back to the apartment I saw the beat cop and crossed over to his side, holding Marta’s arm. I had never seen him, but he knew who I was and touched his cap. “Evening, Lieutenant”

“Hi.” I stuck out my hand and he took it. “Mack Brissom told me to look you up.”

He flushed and grinned. “Didn’t think he’d remember me. He was one of the instructors at the academy. By the way, I’m Hal McNeil.”

“This is Marta Borlig.”

He nodded. “I’ve seen you often, Miss Borlig.”

I nudged her in the ribs, “See, like a sore thumb.”

“Oh, pipe down,” she said pleasantly.

“Quiet around the beat?” I asked him.

“Usual stuff. Last few days a mysterious prowler scared a couple of old ladies. Guy with a face full of whiskers. Big fight two blocks over a week ago and a running feud with three families involved ever since.”

“Hard to handle?”

He shrugged and said seriously, “Nothing the rule book can’t cope with.”

“Well, good to see you, McNeil. Keep an eye on my gal here, okay?”

“That’s an easy job, sir,” he chuckled back. He walked off trying store fronts and nodding to upstairs residents. Good boy, that.

On the way to the apartment Marta stopped at the place I had avoided so long. She looked across the street to the blank face of the brick walls, then at me. “Does it hurt that much to look at it, Joe?”

The house I lived in, I thought, where hunger was a constant hazard that separated living into feasts and famines. Downstairs a guy had murdered his wife and kids while they slept and blew his own brains out afterwards. One floor up Bloody Mary started in business, first with abortions that got her the name, then to a three-bed shag joint until she made enough loot to move to the corner.

“It doesn’t really hurt at all,” I said.

“They’ll be ripping them down in a few months. All three of those buildings were condemned.”

“Twenty years too late,” I said, still picturing half-forgotten faces that seemed to be perpetually leaning out of windows staring vacuously into the street, their arms propped on faded old pillows.

“You still hate it, don’t you?”

I nodded. “I’ve always hated it. Not only the houses. This whole place. This dirty end of the city, the poverty, the squalor. Hardly a chance to get out.”

“You got out”

I said, “Hardly. Besides, I hated it enough.” I looked at the indifference on her face. “I can’t see how you stood it.”

“Maybe I couldn’t hate anything that much. Come on, take me home. Tomorrow’s another day.”

“Sure. Let’s go.”

I said so long in the vestibule, quick, because I didn’t feel like talking to anyone nice. The old house had turned me inside out again, and right now all I wanted was something to wash the taste out. I walked back to Donavan’s Dive, went in and got a beer. In the back something big and fat made a hurried exit through the family exit, and I felt a little better.

When I finished the second the little guy who had been watching me so intently finally caught my eye and I knew what he meant. When I left I headed west, halted in the shadow of a doorway and waited. Five minutes later the little guy came by and when I said, “Here,” he ducked in beside me.

Chapter Five

“You’re Scanlon... Lieutenant Scanlon, right?” It was a statement rather than a question.

“Read off your dog tags, mister,” I told him.

Nervously, he poked his head out and peered down each direction before huddling back in the shadows, “Harry Wope. I got a flop upstairs over Moe Clausist’s hock shop. Work around some, but mostly it’s Social Security.”

“Done time?”

“Six weeks on a vag charge ten years ago.” He shrugged and added, “It was a bad year. Look, you won’t say nothin’ about...”

“Don’t sweat it, Harry. What do you want?”

“That fat slob Reese is after your can, Mr. Scanlon. He got the word in and...”

“I’ve heard it”

“Hell, I don’t mean downtown only like city hall. He’s lookin’ for somebody to hand you lumps. Trouble is, he can’t find nobody, but if he keeps lookin’ he sure will. He’ll blow five hundred to see you dragged out of an alley.”

“Where did you pick this one up?”

“Big ears. I was dumpin’ garbage for Hilo when he was on the phone inside. One of the windows is broke and I heard him.”

I said, “I’m not handing out favors, Harry. Why put me wise?”

Harry Wope leaned toward me, his wrinkled face turned up toward mine, his eyes squinting at me. “You don’t remember me, do you? Nope, guess you wouldn’t at that No reason to after all. Me and your father was in France together during the First World War. He saved my ass once. I used to come around when you was a kid. He only had four then when I seen you last. Knew your ma too.”

Then I remembered him. A funny guy who wore his uniform until there was nothing left of it, having Saturday breakfasts in our kitchen and eating like a wolf to make up for a week of missed meals. “Thanks, Harry. I’ll remember it”

“If I hear anything more, I’ll let you know.”

“Don’t stick your neck out,” I said.

I toured the area slowly, letting the familiar things reestablish themselves. On the side of Carmine’s grocery I ran my hand over the deeply carved initials Larry and I had put there with Doug Kitchen’s and René Mills’ underneath. A dozen layers of paint had not been enough to fill them in. At the school yard where Noisy Stuccio and Hymie Shapiro had sat in the cab of the rubbish truck and accidentally knocked it into gear the long gash still showed in the brick wall.

All dead now, I thought. We had all scrambled over rooftops together, saved empty deposit bottles for Saturday movies, reenacted those same pictures in the park, turning from cowboys and Indians into soldiers or cops and robbers, depending on what had played. Maybe the pattern had started then. Larry ate up the Indian roles. He even had a headdress and a tomahawk. At nine I was the cop. Noisy, Hymie and René went the George Raft route and fancied themselves hotshot mobsters. Doug Kitchen wanted to be a sailor, only they hardly ever had Navy movies unless they were musical comedies, and Doug felt like he had two left feet all the time.

And Marta... little Giggie... trailed us around throwing rocks at us because she was a girl and didn’t belong in the game. I grinned and felt the tiny scar at my hairline where she connected one time. She got a boot in the tail for that one and ran home bawling.

It was one-thirty when I turned the corner and walked toward the spot where Doug Kitchen had died. Down farther, across the street, a pair of drunks argued noisily about nothing; on the stoops here and there couples huddled in the darkness, taking advantage of the only time there was any privacy at all. A few loud voices bellowed from behind closed windows in the upper apartments, sounds that never seemed to change in volume or subject matter. On my side, coming toward me, a late-shift worker ambled along watching his feet until another person stepped out of the shadows, said something that made him hesitate a few seconds before he kept walking, while the other one went back into the shadows.

He passed me without anything more than a glance while I kept walking to where he had the contact, and when I reached there the girl stepped out of her spot beside the balustrade, handbag swinging, voice deliberately provocative, and said, “In a hurry, mister?”

“Nope.”

“I could be company if you want to go somewhere.”

“Sounds good,” I said. “How much?”

I sensed her smile, and saw the way she thrust her body out to accentuate her breasts and hips. “Ten’ll get you more than you have a right to expect.”

“Deal, kid,” I said. Then I took a cigarette out, stuck it between my lips and fired it up. When she saw my face her breath was sucked in so hard she nearly choked. “Hello, Paula,” I said.

Paula Lees’ face was a pale oval in the yellow light of the match. Her mouth started to quiver, and for a second I thought she was going to make a break for it so I reached out and took her arm. She shook her head and almost whispered, “Please...”

“You could take a fall, Paula. Soliciting... a vag rap. Maybe eighteen months in detention.”

She caught the implication of that one word... could. “What... do you want, Mr. Scanlon?”

“Where’s your place?”

Paula looked back over her shoulder. “Right here.”

“Let’s go inside then.”

The tiny flat was typical of all the others around it, existing within a myriad of smells both human and vegetable. The walls were scratched and dirty, the paper peeling, the plaster cracked, and no attempt at rejuvenation could dent the squalor of the place.

Her apartment consisted of two rooms and a bathroom someone had made out of a closet, a combination living room and kitchen with an adjoining bedroom. Paula didn’t get the picture straight. She headed for the bedroom immediately and started to undress. She had her blouse and bra off and the zipper down on her skirt when I said, “Put them back on, kid.”

She jerked her head around. “But...”

I didn’t let her finish. “I’m not taking a pay-off in trade.”

Fractured modesty suddenly overcame her then. She edged behind the door and when she came out again she was dressed, spots of red showing high on her cheekbones and her mouth drawn into a tight, angry line. “I’m not doing any special tricks, Mr. Scanlon. None of that fancy stuff...”

“Sit down and shut up.”

Paula spun around at my tone, licked her lips nervously and did as she was told. After a minute of staring at her shoes she looked up and said, “Well?”

“How many kids working this street, Paula?”

She thought about it, shrugged and said, “Just me. It ain’t too good here.”

“Why stay?”

Her eyes seemed to crawl to mine. “Because they won’t let me go nowhere else.” I didn’t say anything. I just sat there. She added, “When Bummy Lentz and Loefert came down I scratched Bummy up and told Loefert off. Now they don’t let me off this block, the bastards.”

“Still the same old routine, isn’t it? Hoods still pushing the hustler trade. Where does Loefert come in?”

Paula shook her head. “He didn’t do nothing but make a call to the right guy.”

“Al Reese?”

She didn’t answer. She didn’t have to.

I grinned. “Bummy won’t bother you any more. He got tanked on some bad booze with a wood alcohol base two weeks ago and died in Bellevue.”

“So the call still goes.”

“Maybe,” I said. “I’ll get the heat off you, but you get the hell off this street and find a job. There’s enough work in this town without wearing your tail out.”

“And for this you want what?” she challenged.

I said, “You’ve been out there every night, haven’t you?”

Paula nodded.

“Your name didn’t show as a witness to Doug Kitchen’s death.” When she looked down at her feet again I knew I had her. Like everybody else, she had been interviewed by the Homicide team but gave a negative answer. “You saw it, didn’t you?”

She knew what would happen if she tried to lie out of it. She’d sweat it out downtown with a soliciting charge over her head. Silently, she nodded again.

“Let’s hear it, kid.”

For a few seconds she sat there, then glanced up resignedly and said, “I saw him coming down the block, all right. Hell, I didn’t know it was him. He stopped and waved to somebody across the street who was going by under the light, but it was too far for me to see who it was. I saw him start to cross over and so did the other guy, then Doug sort of stopped, talked a little bit and began to back up. All of a sudden he started to run and this other guy, he just shot him right in the back. When Doug didn’t fall he shot twice again, and he fell right on the sidewalk. That other guy... he just walked away up the street.”

“What did you do?”

“Do? I went back inside, that’s what I did. I didn’t come out until the next morning. And I told a John I was going see him that night too.”

“Anything recognizable about the other guy?”

Paula shook her head. “It was too far away.”

“Think some more, Paula. A kill always has something special about it. Once you see it happen you don’t forget it very easily.”

Tight lines appeared at the corners of her eyes and she suddenly looked older than she was. “Honest, Mr. Scanlon...” She paused, bit her lip, then said, “It ain’t nothing, but that other guy... he let out a yell like.”

“What kind of yell?”

“Just a funny yell, then he shot him and walked away. It wasn’t loud, but I heard him. There wasn’t traffic or nothing right then. I heard him yell, that’s all. It didn’t sound right. I was scared. Honest, Mr. Scanlon...”

“Forget it, Paula.” I got up from the chair and slapped on my hat.

“What are you going to... do with me?”

“Not a thing, kid. Vice isn’t my specialty. I’m not here on a case. It’s just that I knew Doug Kitchen when we were all living around here. As far as you’re concerned, I’ll do what I said I’d do. If you’re smart you’ll get your tail off this street too.”

She believed me then and something changed in her eyes. “Gee,” she told me, “it’s hard to believe a cop would... well...” Paula lowered her eyes demurely, then caught mine again. Briefly, she glanced toward the bedroom. “If you’d like... I could show you... like real special things and...”

“Uh-uh,” I said. “I got all I can handle right now,” I lied.

But she didn’t know it and smiled as if she did.

The reports had listed only one other witness who wasn’t sure of what he had seen at all, a drunk coming out of a stupor he had laid on all day, who had seen the kill from the stairway going into the cellar at number 1209. The first shot made him look up and on the next he had seen Doug fall. Then he ducked down below the cement wall and stayed there. He thought he remembered a guy standing in the street but couldn’t be sure and he wasn’t the kind of witness you bothered pressing. If anybody else saw the incident he wasn’t talking. Right now the department had their own stoolies asking around, but in that neighborhood there was a natural, inborn reluctance to even mention anything that would make any more trouble than was already there, so it was doubtful if anything would turn up.

Walking back I reviewed what the sheets had stated. René Mills was found dead behind a building and only one person had mentioned hearing what could have been a gunshot and wasn’t sure of the time. Hymie Shapiro was killed inside his car where it was parked outside his apartment. Noisy Stuccio was shot in the tenement where he lived with the TV turned on full and if the sound hadn’t been up so high that the guy downstairs came up to complain, the body wouldn’t have been found for days.

Somebody was doing it nice and neatly. Very pro.

And there was one thing I was sure of. It wasn’t over yet. Interwoven in the wild hodgepodge of murders there was a peculiar pattern. So far the theme of it hadn’t emerged yet, but it would. It would. It was just too bad that somebody else would have to die before it showed all the way.

When it did I’d be there and a killer would be under the end of my gun with the big choice of dying on the spot or sweating it out in a mahogany and metal chair with electrodes on his legs and one on his head that was the big, permanent nightcap.

There was one more stop I wanted to make before the night was over. I walked one block, turned the corner and went in the vestibule beside Trent’s candy store and struck a match to look at the nameplate over the bells on the wall. A tarnished copper strip read R. CALLAHAN and I nudged the button. A minute later the automatic trip clicked on the door and I pushed it open, went up the stairs to the landing and waited outside the door.

Fifteen years ago Ralph Callahan had been retired from the force, but he had spent his life on the beat in his own neighborhood and you could never take the department out of the man. His eyes would still see, his mind classify events with practiced skill, even though he wasn’t active, but like every other retired police officer, he still had certain privileges extended him by the city including carrying a badge and a gun if he chose to.

When he opened the door he made me with a glance, nodded curtly and said, “Come on in, son.”

“Hello, Ralph.” He was a big guy even yet, filling out his pajamas in a stance that marked thousands of days in a uniform.

He waved me to a kitchen chair after closing the bedroom door softly. “The missus is a light sleeper,” he told me and sat down on the other side of the table. “Now... don’t remember you, but you look familiar.” I started to reach for my badge, but he waved me off. “I know what you are all right, son.”

I grinned at him. “Joe Scanlon. You laid a couple across my behind with that stick of yours when I was a kid.”

“Well, I’ll be damned,” he said. “Now where are you?”

“Homicide. Special detail right now. Marta Borlig’s working it with me.”

“Damn, ain’t the department getting tricky?” He studied me a few seconds, then leaned forward on the table, his hands folded together. “Those four kills?”

“Uh-huh. Smell anything?”

“If I did I would have reported it. Nobody knows a thing.”

His eyes watched me shrewdly, and I said, “There’s another interesting angle.”

“That’s what I was waiting for you to say. Loefert and the others showing up?”

“That’s right,” I agreed. “What does it look like to you?”

“They’re out of place around here, that’s what it looks like. The only rackets going on are small stuff. Numbers, a few books, that sort of thing. A few hustlers work around, but it’s all normal procedure, and not big enough to crack down on. Hell, nobody’s got enough money in this neighborhood to lay on hard.”

“But they’re here, so it must mean something else.”

The elderly cop leaned back and frowned at the ceiling. “I got an idea that could connect”

“Oh?”

He lowered his eyes and steadied them on mine. “Remember that guy... Gus Wilder, the one who jumped bail in Toledo when he was going to testify against the Gordon-Carbito mob?”

“I saw the flyers and read the news accounts.”

Ralph bobbed his head. “He lived two blocks over for five years. Still got a brother there. The brother’s straight... runs a dry cleaning shop, but I’m thinking they’re watching him to see if Wilder makes a contact”

“Why?”

Callahan grinned at me. “Things you brass cops seem to forget. The Gordon-Carbito mob upstate did the local boys a favor once... a big one. Could be now the locals are returning it by keeping an eye out for Wilder. If he talks the upstate combo will fall.”

“A possibility,” I agreed. I stood up and pushed the chair back. “Keep your ears open... I’ll appreciate it. If you need a contact, try Marta Borlig, only keep it on the q.t that she’s on the force.”

“Will do, Joe.”

“Thanks for your time.”

“Don’t mention it.” I said good night and went downstairs to look for a cruising cab.

My morning reports were finished at nine and I handed them to Mack Brissom. “Want some coffee? I’m meeting Marty at the diner.”

“Can’t do, friend. I’m tied up with that Montreal thing. A cross check on the ballistics came in and the gun used in Montreal was the same used in an attempted bank heist in Windsor a week earlier and to kill a gas station attendant in Utica four days after the Montreal bit”

“That’s not our jurisdiction,” I said.

“Yeah, I know. But the gun was found in a B.M.T. subway train by a passenger and turned in. No prints, unregistered and probably deliberately left there. It could be a red herring dodge to keep the action here while the killer is miles away, but we have to push it all the way.”

“Any of the money showing up yet?”

“Nothing. Lousy thing is, who could tell? Only part of the loot was in bills big enough to have the serial numbers recorded. It’s like the Brinks job... they’ll hold off until things quiet down before dumping the stuff.”

“Well, have fun.”

Mack didn’t seem to hear me. He shook his head, looking out the window. “Screwy deal, that one. The bank heist was a bust because four detectives were on the premises cashing their checks and stopped it. The Montreal job took a lot of planning... more than one single week. That was a top operation.”

“Maybe the guy who used the gun was brought in just to give them cover,” I suggested.

“Ah, I don’t know. It smells. It’s real sour. We got a tipoff from Canada that something had been in the wind a long time. Two mobsters from the States had been spotted up there a couple months earlier and sent back across the line, persona non grata. The day after the job an abandoned American automobile was found three miles from the scene that had been stolen in Detroit a week before, so there’s a general tie-in.

“Take the guy with the gun... he grabbed a car in Detroit, ran over to Windsor to pull the bank job, muffed it, then pulled the Montreal deal, dumped the car and took off. A report from a motel in the area where the car was left, that catered to tourists from the States, called in a stolen car with Jersey plates the same day.”

I said, “It looks nice except for that one thing, Mack. You don’t plan that kind of holdup in a week... not on the run, anyway.”

Mack collected his papers from the desk and folded them under his arm as one of the duty officers came in and handed him a sheet. He looked at it, scowled, then glanced at me. “That stolen car from Jersey was found in the Bronx.”

“The boy’s coming home,” I grinned.

“So he takes the subway, leaves the gun there so he can’t get picked up with it and finds a hideout. But where?”

“Why don’t you try the Ritz,” I suggested. “He’d have enough cash along to afford the rates.”

“Drop dead.”

We left together and I went down to meet Marty at the diner. She was already there, tall, fresh and cool looking in a trim suit that couldn’t hide her loveliness no matter how businesslike it was cut. She had coffee and pie ready for me and a notepad open on the table in front of her. I said, “Hi, little Giggie,” and sat down.

“If you weren’t my superior you’d hear something,” she told me.

“Superior in all things, sugar.”

“All?”

“Like I said... all.”

“Maybe you need a lesson, big boy.”

“In what?” I grinned.

“Oh, shut up.” She sipped at her coffee, then pulled the pad toward her. “I had a talk with a few people on the block.”

“And...?”

“Remember what Fat Mary said about René Mills hinting about coming into some money?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Confirmed. He was seen with a roll, paid off two big bar bills, cleaned up an account overdue by three months at the grocer’s and made a pitch at Helen Gentry who has pretty expensive tastes and only goes with the boys who are loaded. On top, he laid in a case of expensive Scotch whiskey and paid for it in cash.”

“So?”

Marty closed the pad and said, “He’d been pimping for those two girls who live over Papa Jones’ store for three years now. Cheap trade, and the take couldn’t have been big, but it was all he had, then suddenly he tells them both to take off... that he’s going out of business.”

“Not much cash was found on the body,” I said. “None of that Scotch was found in the apartment, either.”

“Screwy,” she mused.

I told her about my conversation with Ralph Callahan the night before and she nodded, thinking the same thing I was. I said, “He could have been hiding out Gus Wilder for a price.”

“We could check and see if they ever had a previous contact.”

“Not now we can’t, kid. You’re supposed to be a working girl. Until tonight we’ll go at it from a different angle. If the local mob is looking for Wilder they’ll have their own sources. Let’s see if they really are. Think you can run a check?”

“Sure. Regulation procedure accelerated by native ingenuity. I’ll see those who are assigned to that detail.”

I finished my coffee and dropped a bill on the table. “Good enough. I’ll pick you up at the apartment tonight.” I started to leave, then stopped and turned around. “Don’t get involved personally. Let somebody else do the legwork.”

“I can handle it myself, Joe.”

“Perhaps, but I don’t want you to lose your cover. Probe too far and some newshawk will get curious and your picture will be in the paper. That would wipe out your effectiveness in the neighborhood.”

“All right, Joe,” she smiled, “I’ll be careful.” But all that time she knew what I really meant I was getting a damn funny feeling about that woman, one I had never experienced before. Something that was like a fist tightening in my belly and sending a warm, crawly sensation across my back.

Chapter Six

Henry Wilder’s dry cleaning place was a hole-in-the-wall operation that catered to the local trade. Enough business kept him from poverty, but he was never going to get rich there. He lived upstairs over his store, a prematurely balding bachelor about fifty with tired lines around his eyes and a nervous flutter to his hands. I caught him on his lunch hour, flashed my badge and got invited in to a shabby room cluttered with junk and three racks of clothes customers had either forgotten about or didn’t have the money to redeem.

When I sat down he fidgeted on the edge of his chair waiting for me to speak. Finally I said, “Ever hear from your brother Gus?”

“That bum!”

“I didn’t ask that.”

“Sometimes I get a letter. He was up on charges in Toledo.”

“Hear from him since?”

Henry Wilder was going to say no, but knew he couldn’t make the lie stick. “Sure... a phone call. After he jumped bail.”

“Where was he?”

He licked his mouth nervously and toyed with the food on his plate. “He ain’t that simple. He called direct”

“Why?”

His eyebrows went up then. “Money. What else? He wants me to send him five hundred bucks. Now where the hell am I supposed to get five hundred bucks? He didn’t even ask. He just told me to get it ready and he’d tell me where to send it”

“Going to?”

Once again, his tongue snaked out. “I... don’t know.” He took a sip of coffee to wet his mouth and added, “I’m scared of him. I always was.”

“He’s your brother, isn’t he?”

Wilder shook his head. “Stepbrother. Hell, I’d sooner turn him in, only it might not work and he’d come after me.” His eyes held a pleading expression. “What am I supposed to do?”

“The cops aren’t the only ones looking for Gus, buddy.”

“I know. That’s what I figured. So I’m caught in the middle either way,” he said.

“Then take a chance and play it right. If he calls you, call us. We have ways of keeping things quiet”

“Can... I think about it?”

“Sure. One way or another he’ll turn up, but like you said, why get caught in the middle? He asked for anything he gets.”

I went to get up, then changed my mind and asked, “You know the girls René Mills had working for him?”

For a second his face took on a startled look, then he nodded. “Rose Shaw and Kitty Muntz. They come in all the time. Rose should be in soon to pick up her stuff. That Mills, he gave ’em the boot before he kicked off.”

“So supposing we go downstairs and wait for her, Henry.”

“In the shop?” He swallowed hard, knowing what they thought of cops around here.

“Don’t worry, I’ll even help out behind the counter.” Rose Shaw didn’t show until ten after three, a flagrant little whore with a hard, tight body encased in a too-small sweater and blouse combination, her eyes showing the cynicism of her profession, the caustic twist to her mouth accentuating it. She threw her ticket down on the counter top with a crumpled ten-dollar bill from a plastic purse and stood there with a hurry-up look on her face.

I got up from the stool where I was sitting while Henry Wilder was collecting her clothes. She made me as fast as Ralph Callahan did, but in a different way. The lids half closed over her pupils and the mouth went into a semi-sneer that spat copper, and she was ready to tell me to stuff it because she wasn’t working a pad at the moment and there was nothing I could lay on her. She was too wise to get trapped by a phoney approach, and wasn’t about to get stuck with a pay off if I was a bad one.

One by one the possibilities ran through her mind, eliminating the wrong ones, and when I still didn’t make a move her face clouded because she couldn’t tap the right answer. Then she got jumpy. There is something peculiar about those on the stiffer sides of the fence, the law and the punks. In some ways they seem to look alike sometimes. They work in the same areas in the same profession with the same people, and it gets to them so they adopt common mannerisms and expressions and deep in the back of their eyes is buried a mutual hatred for each other.

But we had the advantage. We could read them. They could never quite read us. They were the ones who were mixed up, not us.

I said, “Talk or walk, Rose.”

“Look, mister...”

The badge lay in my hand, nicely palmed. “Talk here, walk downtown. Take your pick.”

She said something under her breath and glanced around her. “Screw you, copper. Not in public.”

“You name it then.”

“I got a room at 4430. It’s where I live, not work.”

“Go ahead. I’ll give you ten minutes.”

“Second floor in the back.” She swore under her breath, draped her clothes over her arm, picked up her change and walked out, her face still full of disgust.

I gave her the ten minutes and picked my way down to her brownstone, cut in quickly and shoved the door open. The odor of burned grease and cabbage was heavy on the air, cutting through the mustiness of dirt and decay. The steps were hollowed by the tread of thousands of feet traversing them, creaky with age and littered with odds and ends of callous living. I found her door, knocked once and turned the knob without being asked to come in.

Rose Shaw sat with her feet up on a table, a beer in her hand, deliberately posed so I could see up her dress past the muscular smoothness of her thighs. I said, “Forget the peep show, Rose,” and swung a chair around and sat down with my arms lying across its back.

“Swing me, copper. I’m waiting to hear the pitch.”

“Let’s start with René Mills.”

She shrugged elaborately and took a pull from the can of beer. “He’s dead. What else?”

“Why, Rose?”

“I can think of a hundred reasons. Somebody beat me to it. Kitty too. Hell, she pulled out before René was knocked off. I thought she was dumber’n me, but she saw the signs, she did. She knew what was coming and cut out before she was told to.”

“Where is she?”

“Jersey City. She left yesterday. Her old man let her go back to work for him in a factory. She won’t like it.”

“And how about you?”

“What the hell do you care?”

“I don’t”

“So why the action?” she asked.

“René Mills,” I repeated.

“You seem to know the score. Where do I come in? So I’m puttin’ out for cash, man. It ain’t the best, but it’ll do until something better shows.” She lost her hate for a second and stared at the ceiling. “Would you believe it, I used to be big time. Miami, then, and that was only four years ago. I was seventeen and rolling in the long green. Man, what days.”

“What happened?”

“I got clapped up and handed it out, and like that I was out. Two trips to the medic and I was okay, but the curse was there, man. So what’s new?”

“Get back to René Mills.”

She made a face and finished the beer. “He took me on. Me and Kitty. We was broke, willing and able. The trade was lousy compared to the other, but that’s the breaks. He set up the scene, we split fifty-fifty only we paid all the bills.” She gave another of those resigned shrugs and said, “We made out”

“Why’d he drop you then?”

“Went big time... like ha ha. He always had ideas and they got him dead. So this time he tells us to get lost, lays on a hundred bucks apiece when he’s all grins and new shoes with that watch back on his wrist he stole from some guy in a bar and hocked... got eighty bucks for it from Norman at the hockshop, so it was worth plenty.”

“How, Rose?”

“Who knows, copper? You think he’d spill? Hell, he booted Noisy Stuccio out of his pad a week before, and you know how close they were. Sure, old René had somethin’ going for him all the way.”

“And what would you say it was?”

She reached back over her shoulder, opened the small refrigerator and took out another bottle of beer. She didn’t offer me one. When she jacked the top off she said, “It was fresh money he didn’t expect. It came sudden like, but I’ll tell you this... he couldn’t get his hands on all of it. What he had was plenty, but not the large stuff. He liked to talk big, and kept hinting at what he was going to come into, but I knew that slob too damn well. He was thinking and working on something he didn’t have but sure damn well expected to get one way or another. That bastard wouldn’t let a penny get past him if he could help it”

“Who supplied it?”

“What’s it get me, copper?” She eyed me curiously, waiting for my answer.

“Ask,” I said.

She started to speak, stopped and gave me one more of those shrugs and went back to her beer.

“I can give you advice,” I said.

“Screw your advice,” she told me coldly. “No advice from a cop.”

“I got a friend who makes pictures. We were in the war together. He might be able to use your type if you have the guts to try. Maybe it won’t work, but I can always ask.”

“Why?”

“Why not?”

I was starting to feel like a damn dogooder and didn’t like it. Thirty days in the can would probably make more of an impression, but she was from the place I grew up and couldn’t get out and I knew what she felt like.

Rose looked at me, the beer motionless in her hand. “You mean it, don’t you?”

I nodded.

“What’s this world coming to?” she said. “So I’ve tried everything, why not advice from a cop?” The hardness washed out of her eyes and the expression turned serious. “René had somebody stashed in his apartment. Somebody he knew.”

“How did you know that?”

“Because he was buying groceries for two, that’s why. I saw him at the deli, old Pops mentioned it and once I saw the laundry he brought into the laundromat. He bought booze he’d never buy for himself and he had those allover smiles he never had when times was hard.”

“Who, Rose?”

“I never inquired. If I did it would mean a belt in the mouth and I had enough of that, and in my business that would be...”

“Disastrous,” I supplied. “Yeah.”

I got up and pushed the chair back where it was. “I’ll make that call for you. Take it.”

“Okay, copper,” she said. She lifted the bottle to her lips, sipped at it without taking her eyes from mine, then put it down and smiled. “And you know what? I’ll make it, too.” When I agreed with a little grin she said, “Watch out for that Al Reese. He had the bull on René and was pushing him. You’re the copper I’ve been hearing about, aren’t you?”

“Probably.”

“Then watch him. He knew René had dough coming. I saw them arguing one day and it was all on Al’s side. He had René pinned because of something he knew René did, like he does with everybody else, and held it over his head. When René started flashing that cabbage, Al was there, so he put things together and put the squeeze on him. Don’t play that fat boy down, copper. He’s just a precinct captain around here, but dig his place on the Sound and that boat he has and the broads he pays for and you’ll see more. The tax people ought to do him like they did Capone. Where he lives here is only for show to get the votes for the party like he’s one of the boys, but he’s a power, man, a big power.”

“I’ll watch him,” I said.

“He’s smart.”

“So am I.”

“He’s tough.”

“I’m a helluva lot tougher, sugar.”

“But he knows more about René and that’s what you’re interested in, isn’t it?”

“You’re on the ball.”

“I like you, copper. You’re welcome to stay a while if you want.”

For fun I winked like maybe I’d be back, but we both knew what it meant. Twice now I’d been invited to a bed party free by a couple of pros who could make it interesting and twice I kissed off the deal. Too much training, I thought. Too many Army VD films.

Hell, that wasn’t the reason. It was that damn Marty. I kept thinking about her.

The late-afternoon shift was just beginning to drift into Donavan’s place when I got there. This was the straight bunch, the guys still in work clothes carrying lunch pails, having a drink before they had to breech the fortresses of their own homes. The bartender caught my entry and tried to pass the word, but I stopped him with a single look and went back to where Donavan was sitting behind a paper and pulled it away from his face.

“Al Reese,” I said. “Where is he?”

His tone was bland, but forced. “He ain’t been in.”

All I had to do was start that damn vicious grin again.

“Try Bunny’s,” he said in a hurry. He covered his fright by looking at his watch. “He don’t generally come over here until six.”

I said, “You make a call, Donavan, you put the word out and I’ll smear you all over your own joint. You got that?”

“Listen, Scanlon...”

Tough guys I didn’t like. I just grinned again, and he got the message. Whatever he saw in my face scared the crap out of him. “Look... I got my own business...”

I didn’t bother to hear him out.

Bunny’s was a fag joint around the bend. Hell, you’ve probably read about it a dozen times if you keep up with the columns. At night a cop is stationed outside and a cruiser goes by every ten minutes looking for trouble. It was an old place and back when Prohibition was still in effect and the stage door Johnnies were still escorting the chorus babes around as status symbols and it was a genuine saloon, Larry and I were making bucks for eating money holding open car doors for the tux crowd and sometimes steering the lonelies to spots where exciting company could be found in a hurry.

Now it was changed, the exterior was gaudy, the canopy and doorman expensive, the line of taxis unusually long for this area at this time, but the reason plain... it was the convention season, and the out-of-towners wanted a peek at New York in the rough.

I could still feel Larry at my side, laughing at the suckers, knowing what marks they’d be when a forlorn lad was out for a favor and a broad watching to see how expansive her date would be. Hell, that was how he got his loot to go watch all the Tom Mix shows.

Chief Crazy Horse, I kept thinking. Miss you, boy. Of all that big family we had, I miss you the most. One lousy war and a missing in action notification telegram busts us up.

You didn’t miss a thing, Larry. The world went wild after you left. Most of the bunch are dead. Some died with you... some the hard way. Some are still waiting to die. The rest just waiting.

I went inside.

Al Reese was at the bar, his bulk taking up a corner of it Loefert was two stools down with a pretty, but hard-looking B girl beside him, and next to her Will Fater and Steve Lutz were sipping drinks without talking, satisfied with watching their reflections in the back bar mirror.

It was going to be a fun evening. And the night hadn’t even begun.

When I tapped him on the shoulder he turned around, annoyed at the interruption, his chunky jowls ready to chop into me with a wise remark, then all at once he went white.

Everybody was looking when I said, “On the wall, fatty. Hands out, feet back and apart and make a move I don’t like and you’ll catch one.” I let them see the rod in the Weber rig and whatever my face said, they knew I wasn’t kidding. To insure the deal I nodded to Loefert, Fater and Lutz to join him and without a word they took the position. Hell, I knew they’d all be clean, but when you roust you roust and you don’t give a damn. Tomorrow all hell would break loose at HQ when Reese put the squeal in, but right then I was enjoying myself. The customers had a treat, the hired help had a laugh and Al Reese damn near had a stroke when I finally got them patted down, identified and let them go back to their seats. For the others it was an old routine, but for Reese, it was strictly a new experience.

To add to it, I shoved him in the corner and made it quick. I made it loud enough so the bartender would hear it and let it go out on that grapevine that was faster than Western Union and said, “Fat boy... there’s a girl named Paula Lees that you lay off.” I looked over at Loefert and knew he was listening to every word. “If you... or anybody... bothers her I’ll take your ears off. Now I’m not speaking figuratively. I mean take your ears off. One day see Fuchie. Remember him? Remember that goatee he had? Know what his chin looks like now? I did that, fat boy, and the same I’ll do to your ears. Yell all you want and it’ll be like old times in the Tombs with the rubber hose and the hard cell. Think we can’t do it that way now and you aren’t thinking straight.”

I gave Al Reese one hard shot in the kidneys with my fist to punctuate the argument and all the breath went out of him in a long sigh and Loefert turned eyes of pure hate my way while the others played it cool and just looked away.

But they got the message.

Paula Lees got her freedom.

It was that easy. So far.

I was a cop coming home to his old turf who didn’t like what he saw and decided to clean it up. I could hit the punks and take care of the unfortunate. Word would go out and maybe talking to them would be easier. Maybe.

At six I knocked at Marty’s door and heard her run across the room to answer it. She had changed into a skirt and blouse, let her hair down, and the welcome home smile she gave me sent that feeling back into my stomach again. I could smell the coffee and hear chops sizzling in the kitchen and went in licking my lips.

“Hungry, Joe?” She saw my expression and added, “Don’t answer that,” with an even bigger smile. “Grab a beer out of the fridge. Everything’ll be ready in a minute.”

Damn, my place was never like this.

We ate with a peculiar intimacy neither of us wanted to mention, but it hung in the air like a wild perfume. We talked about little things, both of us prolonging the moments we had until it came to an end over coffee. Marty poured a second cup and said, “The boys will kick you out of the club if they know you’ve been consorting with girls.”

“No more. Most of them are dead.”

“Strange, isn’t it?” She put the pot back on the stove and sat down. “Time goes so fast. I can remember chasing you and Larry, trying to get into the game... you sending me on stupid errands so I’d get lost or Larry making like he was going to scalp me with that tomahawk...”

“I was thinking of him before,” I said.

“You miss him, don’t you?”

“We were pretty close. We were those kind of brothers.” I shrugged. “Life, kid.”

“I know.”

It had to end sooner or later so I said, “Finish your check today?”

She regretted the sudden switch as much as I did and nodded ruefully, her attitude suddenly professional. “Verbal?”

“That’ll do.”

“Murphy had the most to contribute,” she told me. “He has some people inside their ranks and the word is that there is something hot brewing. The top men are pretty disturbed about something and have been doing a lot of traveling between New York and Chicago. Looked like a high-level series of meetings. There is a definite connection with the mob here and upstate... they’re looking out for Gus Wilder, all right, but that factor isn’t of prime importance. It’s something else... and that nobody is talking about.”

“Still leaves us guessing,” I said.

“Not quite. Orders that came from one of those meetings directed Loefert, Fater and Steve Lutz into this area. We concentrate on them, and we might find out something.”

“Those guys don’t break very easily,” I reminded her.

“Somewhere, they always have a chink in the armor, don’t they?”

“Always,” I grinned. She was beginning to think like a beat cop now and not a social worker.

“Then how do we start?”

“With the first kills. It’s a homicide case, baby.”

“Until now nobody’s talked. Nobody saw anything.”

“I’m glad you’re so damn confident.”

“Kitten, I’ve been at this job a long time,” I said. “There are times when they get ready. All you have to do is prod them a little.”

“Okay then, ugly, I’m ready whenever you are,” she laughed.

Chapter Seven

The supper crowd had left Tony’s Pizza when we got there. One couple was at the small bar, and two tables were occupied. Fat Mary was busy forcing another helping on one pair and Tony was behind the bar listening to a small transistor radio. Marty and I climbed on the stools and Tony saw us and came over grinning, the first time I saw him smile in a long time. He said hello in his rich Neapolitan accent and drew two beers automatically.

“You do nice thing for those girls, Joe,” he told me. “I see them, they very glad. Terrible a woman should be on the streets and pushed around. Terrible.”

“They should have kept their mouths shut or people will think the cops are getting soft.”

“Ah, no. It is not like you think.” He gave us a knowing glance then. “Now you two, you belong here. Good maybe that you come back, Joe. Things are bad here, very bad.”

“Those killings?”

Tony nodded vigorously. “Very bad, that.”

“It’s another department and I’m off duty. The hell with it.”

His face pulled itself into a seamy, concerned frown. “Who cares about here, Joe? The cops? They don’t care. Somebody dies, so what?” He leaned forward confidentially. “That killer, he’s still here. He can kill anybody.”

“What can I do, Tony? Hell, I knew all the guys who got knocked off. I went to school with “em.”

Tony gave me a typical shrug. “So they’re no good, well okay. But still good people here, you can bet. You oughta know. Plenty good people. They’re scared, that’s what.”

“You scared?”

“Sure. I was scared of that stupid René Mills. I’m scared of everybody like them.”

I kept my voice down. “What was with him, Tony? He was flashing money around and it was more than he ever had before. René never had the brains to set up a heist and nobody was going to just give it to him. He was a low-type punk.”

Tony let his eyes rove around the place before he answered. “You know what I think? He had something on somebody. He was expectin’ plenty money soon. He had it all set.”

“Yeah?”

“Better’n that even. I tell you somethin’, Joe. That René, he stays up all night watching that damn TV or playing cards. Always like that. Never his light go off like he’s scared of the dark. Then alla sudden he got them lights out right after it gets dark. He comes down and goes up, but never a light goes on and when it does the shade is down like never before. He got somebody up there with him.”

“Hiding him out?”

I got another big shrug that lasted three seconds. “Who knows?”

“Doesn’t sound reasonable, Tony. Who the hell would trust René Mills?”

Tony gave me a face full of fat lip. “Suppose there’s nobody else he can go to?”

“It wouldn’t be René Mills, buddy.”

“For whoever it was, he kicked Noisy Stuccio out, didn’t he? René, he wouldn’t give a pork chop to his own mother if she didn’t pay. So Noisy paid him, then gets the boot. Noisy was pretty damn mad. Plenty years he live with René and pays most the bills ’cause he’s scared of René. Then the boot. How about that?”

“How about that?” I repeated. “René still feeling pretty high when he got killed?”

“Sure. He thought he was all set. You gotta get that one, Joe.”

“There’s nothing to get.”

“No?” He gave me a curious look. “Then ask that Al Reese. That fat bum, he knows. He shoves everybody. He always looking for his bite, that bum. He hooked into René, because I seen René pay him off,” he confided.

I finished my beer and nudged Marta to do the same. “Okay, Tony, maybe. Just maybe, remember? I’m out of my district and I don’t want to make trouble around here.”

“Screw you, Joe. When you and Larry was kids, you made plenty trouble for everybody. That... that... what you call him?”

“Chief Crazy Horse,” I said.

“Yeah him. Nutty Indian. Always wearing them feathers and you want to be a cop. Nobody wanted to play with you, did they?”

“I always caught the crooks,” I said. I tapped the side of my head. “You had to be smart, even when you were playing.”

“Now somebody ain’t playing, Joe. They’re going for real.”

“Well, I’ll see what I can do. Keep it quiet though.” I pushed some change across to him and we finished our beer and left while Fat Mary was still heaping the plates of the customers that were left.

Getting into René’s old apartment was no trouble. The padlock the landlord had put on opened with a sharp rap from my gun butt and the door swung open. Marta found the light switch and pulled it after making sure the shades were drawn.

The police had checked the rooms, found nothing, the landlord had made a partial attempt at cleaning it up, emptying the garbage and piling dishes in the sink, so anything of significance would have been destroyed. Like the other apartments, this was typical of a slum section. It was the front half of a partially renovated brownstone building, the flat containing a living room with a battered TV, a pair of worn mohair chairs and a couple of end tables. The bedroom was furnished with a single bed, chair and table. René’s clothes came from a low cost outlet store, all bore the marks of hard usage except for two pairs of expensive shoes that hadn’t been worn at all. The kitchen was a hodgepodge of rickety pieces, the dishes chipped and cracked, the closet over the refrigerator empty. But there had been plenty of groceries in there. The marks showed in the dust where cans had been stacked and a cash register slip caught in a crack was for forty-two dollars. The landlord wasn’t going to leave all that stuff for the next tenant.

When Marty came back from looking around I asked, “Find anything?”

“Possibly. Come back in the living room a minute.” She pointed to the floor and indicated a series of scratches that led from one chair to the other. “We know what we’re looking for... so do those mean anything?”

I got her point. “Somebody dragged that chair up to the other to make a bed?”

“That’s right. So René did have somebody here.” She looked at me carefully and sat on the arm of the chair. “You see the same picture, don’t you?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Tell it to me.”

I nodded and started pacing the room. “Nobody who knew better would trust René. It had to be someone who knew him well enough to be able to handle him. René was a sharpie. So let’s say this guy needs a hideout and is prepared to pay. He approaches René who kicks Noisy Stuccio out and takes this guy in. Now René starts sharpshooting. He’s going to try to take this guy for his bundle and sets something up, only he makes a mistake in underestimating his new boarder. The guy gets wise and kills him.

“That gets us to Noisy Stuccio. People don’t change and Noisy was a mean little punk who never liked to be second rated. He was always in somebody’s business and he would have wanted to know what was going on and somehow he found out who the boarder was. If this guy knew René, then he certainly would have known Noisy. When René was killed Noisy got the score and made his bid for the loot this guy was packing.”

Marta said, “And wound up the same way.”

“This guy is a pure psychopath. He’ll kill at the drop of a hat. He’s an old experienced hand with the crazy intuitive values psychos have and can kill without leaving a trace. That’s the most difficult part,” I said. “There doesn’t even have to be a motive. He doesn’t go into wild flight that attracts attention and anybody in his way is simply disposed of.”

She frowned and nibbled at a fingernail. “But Hymie Shapiro...”

I cut her off with, “I’ll have to go back to when we were kids. Hymie and Noisy were a couple of sharpies who stuck together. Hymie used to plan little chintzy jobs and leave them up to Noisy to pull off. Could be that Noisy didn’t want to move in on this by himself because he knew he wasn’t capable of pulling it off alone. He always was a lippy guy with Hymie. Suppose he talked it over with Hymie and they laid it out together. Our guy would have moved out after he killed René, but they found out where he was holed up and Noisy went to see him. So the guy makes a date to pay off and instead lets Noisy have a bullet, but not before Noisy tried to insure himself staying alive by reminding the guy someone else knew the play.”

“It sounds good, Joe.”

“What it means is that Noisy didn’t have to tell him who it was that knew. Our guy automatically understood, popped Noisy, then went looking for Hymie and found him.”

“And that brings us up to Doug Kitchen,” Marta said.

“Paula Lees saw that action. Doug saw the guy and recognized him. That’s what got him killed. He started across the street to say hello, then saw what was going to happen and started to run. He was the only one shot in the back.”

“Gus Wilder?”

“They all knew him. Hell, everybody around here knows everybody else, especially when they’re hardcases.”

I stopped pacing then and stared at the dark green surface of the dirty window shade. Marta asked, “What are you thinking of, Joe?”

“There’s a hook in this someplace. I have the feeling that somebody I’ve talked to has fed it to me already and I can’t remember what it is.”

“It’ll come.”

“But I want it now.”

“Relax,” she said softly.

I turned around and grinned at her. “Sure, little Giggie. Come on and let’s try it from another angle.”

When we reached the street there was a slight jolt in the air, concussion from thunder far off, and the sky over Jersey turned a momentary pink. It was cooler now, the smell of rain coming in with the west breeze.

We turned south, reached the corner and saw Hal McNeil, the beat cop, just closing the door of the call box. He touched his cap in a salute and said, “Evening, Lieutenant. I was just going to look you up.”

“What’s doing?”

“Sergeant Brissom wants you to call him back.”

“Thanks, Hal. You got anything on Loefert and his buddies?”

The cop nodded. “They’re doing a lot of poking around. The way it looks, they’ve sectioned the neighborhood off and are scouting the areas. The only one I could reach said they were looking for a strange face. A lot of drifters come through, but they weren’t interested. It’s somebody that would be known but hasn’t been seen for a while.”

“No names?”

“You know these people, sir. They aren’t going to stick their necks out. Too many killings have scared them silly.”

I left him talking to Marta and opened the call box and got the duty officer to put me through to Mack Brissom. “Scanlon, Mack. What’s the pitch?”

“Hi, Joe. We have an opening on the action down there. Now get this bit... one of the Chicago hoods was picked up on an old murder second charge and the D.A. got some talk out of him because the guy hoped to drop the charge down to manslaughter.”

“What’s it about?” I asked him.

“The wheels inside the mob gave the go ahead signal to a group to set up one hell of a big heist and was going to take care of the cover and protection for a fifty percent bite if it came off. Well, it came off, all right, only the one guy who was holding the loot had it hijacked out of his hands by an outsider and broke up the whole deal.”

“Which heist, Mack?”

“Could be the Montreal job. How this outsider got into it is anybody’s guess. He could have known one of the boys, had a few drinks with him and the story came out. They’ll talk to their own kind sometimes. This time, knowing they had the mob’s protection, they’d figure nobody would have the guts to try to move in.”

“What’s the connection?”

“This guy who pulled the hijack was waiting when the driver holding the loot came out of his motel, stuck a gun in his ribs, made him drive to a spot where he had a car parked, belted him cold, took the money and ducked out”

“Recognized?”

“No, he was masked, but when he pulled the gun out a five-dollar bill and a piece of paper came out of his pocket with it. There was a phone number on the paper listed to a candy store run by Sigmund Jones in your neighborhood.”

“I know the one. René Mills kept a pair of whores upstairs over it.”

“Making sense?” Mack asked me.

“It’s there, all right. Does Gus Wilder tie into it at all?”

“When you check the dates it does. Wilder jumped his bond two weeks before the Montreal robbery. He might have known what was cooking inside the mob and was on the spot when it happened to pick up some hideout money. Wilder was damn hot. He knew the mob wasn’t going to let him stay alive if there was any indication that he’d talk about their activities. At the same time he didn’t want to take a big fall. If he didn’t talk, the upstate department was going after him on other charges, so the only choice he had was to jump bail.”

“So the mob detailed their boys to look him up,” I stated.

“That’s the picture we’re getting here. All he got is his brother to turn to.”

I said, “He called Henry asking for five hundred bucks.”

“Could be reasonable, Joe. He wouldn’t want to throw hot money around just yet. That, or he asked for the money before the hijack. Check out the dates on your end, will you?”

“Tonight I’ll call you back after I see Henry Wilder.”

“Right. See you later.”

I hung up, closed the call box and went back to McNeil and Marta. The wind had come up a little stronger and I felt the touch of a raindrop against my face. McNeil said, “Anything I can do, sir?”

“Just keep your eyes open. I got that funny feeling that something’s going to break.”

“Sure will.” He started to walk away, stopped and turned back. “Incidentally, Benny Loefert and Will Fater had a long talk with Al Reese tonight”

“Where?”

“In the back room at Bunny’s place.”

“Who passed on the word?”

“A little guy named Harry Wope.”

“I know him.”

“He thought you might like to know.”

“Tell him thanks.”

McNeil saluted again and went back to his beat.

Henry Wilder didn’t appreciate the interruption. Since I saw him last he seemed to have curled up inside himself and reluctance was in every word he spoke. Gus hadn’t contacted him again and as far as he was concerned he hoped he never heard from him. When I got around to asking when he had the last call he thought about it a minute, then placed the day. I ran it through my mind and let it fit the pattern. Gus’ call had come after he jumped his bond and before the Montreal job, so Mack Brissom could have hit it right. Gus had no place to go and headed back to the only place he knew where he thought he’d have a reasonable place of security, buried in the anonymity of a decrepit section of the city.

So what happened? I thought. If Gus had lived here he’d know his way around and the people who lived here. It was doubtful that he’d trust anybody, even his stepbrother, so before he moved in on him he’d hole up somewhere else long enough to feel Henry out. Trouble was then, René Mills saw him and knew about him skipping his bond and made a deal with him. If Gus was packing the Montreal money, René would have wanted it for himself and set up the scene to grab it. He would have had Gus move in with him where he could be on top of everything and his greed bought his own death.

It fitted, all right, even to Doug Kitchen. Doug was a gregarious kind of guy who knew everybody and was always there with a ready hello and handshake. Gus was gone from the neighborhood long enough to warrant a greeting upon his return, and Doug died because he recognized him. From little acorns do big oaks grow. A corny cliché, but true.

We told Henry Wilder good night and went downstairs to the street again. The sidewalks were just starting to take on a sheen from the light rain that had started to fall. While we walked I gave it to Marta in detail and let her process it mentally the way I did and her conclusion agreed with mine.

“I think you have it, Joe.”

I shook my head and turned my collar up against the wind. “I don’t know,” I said. “Something’s loose in the picture. I want everything to fit tight”

“Does it always?”

I grinned and looked at her. “Most of the time.”

We got to Papa Jones’ candy store as he was closing. Most of the lights were out and he was stuffing his daily receipts into his pocket when we walked in. He gave Marta a smile, but when he saw me his face went suddenly tight and his shoulders jumped under his too-loose suitcoat. He was remembering me from a long time ago and the time when he broke my nose with the awning rod and I promised to come back and tear him up but never got farther than breaking his front window with a rock.

“Ease off, Papa.” I said. “The past is past. It’s different now.” To prove it I let him see my badge in the wallet and his face went sideways in a curious change of expression. He finally swallowed hard and croaked, “Joe?”

“Nobody else.”

“A... cop?”

“Haven’t you heard? I’ve been around a few days.”

“I... been out,” he said. “Ronnie’s been taking care... of things.”

Marta turned around and explained, “Ronnie’s his nephew.”

Papa Jones glanced at both of us nervously, his fingers fumbling with the buttons of his coat. Cops always make them nervous. “So... what do you want with me? I’m closing up.”

“Remember Gus Wilder, Papa?”

His false teeth clicked and he nodded. “Sure, I remember him.”

“See him lately?”

“He left here a long time ago. He...”

“I didn’t ask that”

Papa Jones took on new confidence then. “I ain’t seen him since.”

“Know him pretty well, Papa?”

He tried to get my angle, but couldn’t figure it and said, “So enough. He used the phone here all the time. Bought cigarettes and things like that.”

“Phone number been changed lately?”

He scowled and shook his head. “Same since you kids used it. The phone got changed, but not the number, why?”

“No reason.”

“So what’s the phone? Everybody uses it. That René Mills, Stuccio... hell, the whole neighborhood uses it. Who got their own phones around here?” he demanded defensively.

“Sure, Papa. Well look, if you see this Wilder, you call us, hear?”

“Yeah,” he said, but didn’t mean it. “Why don’t you ask his brother where he is?”

“That’ll be taken care of. Just do like I said or I’ll keep that old promise. You remember it?”

He did, all right. “Damn bunch of bums, you kids were,” he muttered. Then his face got a little pale and he watched me closely.

I grinned and took Marta’s hand. “Come on, kid.”

Papa Jones slammed and locked the door the minute we were out and yanked the shade down fast. Marta said, “You make quite an impression.”

“I always did with him.”

“What did you make out of it, Joe?”

“It’s tightening up. Like he said, everybody uses the phone. Gus Wilder could have done just that and been spotted by René. He would have waited until Gus came out so Papa Jones wouldn’t see them together and tapped him then. It even explains why Gus had the phone number in his pocket... a secondary number he knew in the neighborhood if he wanted to make a contact in case his brother’s phone was tapped.”

The sky rumbled again and the lightning flashes moved closer. The main force of the rain was starting to sweep in on the city, driving the inhabitants indoors to their sanctuaries. We hugged the sides of the buildings to get out of the bite of the storm, heading across to Bunny’s place. The street was empty, traffic light, just an occasional cab going by, a couple of trucks, a few private cars looking for a way out of the place.

I heard the curious slap of lead against the bricks before I realized what it was. The sound behind it was muffled in the wind, but it could have come from only one direction. I grabbed Marta’s arm, yanked her into a run and dashed across the street and just as we reached the middle I felt her spin a little bit and let out a yell and knew she was hit. I cursed softly, got to the sidewalk and flattened up against the building there with my gun out and ready.

“Joe...”

“Where’d it get you?”

She reached up and touched the top of her shoulder. The cloth was torn and a faint tinge of red darkened the edges of it. “It... isn’t much.”

“Stay down out of sight. He’s in one of these buildings. I’m going in and if I flush him out, hold a gun on him. Think you can make it?”

“Don’t worry.” She grabbed my hand. “Should you... go in alone?”

“There isn’t time to raise anybody else. I know these damn buildings and every way in and out of them. You do what I told you to.”

Before she could answer me I ran up into the brownstone beside me, taking the steps in two leaps, shoved the door open and went up the stairs. There wasn’t an empty apartment on the block and nobody was letting a killer use his place for a firing range. Those shots came from a rooftop and somewhere the guy behind the gun was looking for an escape hatch.

I made the roof at the top of the four stories and came out into the rain from a rusted metal fire door built into the kiosk, the squeak of the hinges like a shrill scream in the darkness. I hit the pebbled surface of the roof and rolled behind the protection of a weather-eroded brick chimney, my eyes probing the black for any movement, any outline of a person.

Too many times I had played these same games on these same rooftops. I was no stranger to these parts at all and it was like old times when the bunch of us turned rooftops into rolling countrysides doing the cowboy and Indian routine or played out the cops and robbers game. I could almost feel Larry beside me, old Chief Crazy Horse, or hear René’s sharp whisper from near the cornice, and Hymie Shapiro’s nervous cough giving away our position to the ones taking the opposite role. Our guns had been cap pistols then, or rubber band gimmicks... but now they were real and the game a lethal one.

I heard him before I saw him. I heard the wrench of metal and the curse and grinned because I knew what had happened. Fire escapes twenty years out of date didn’t hold any more and the bolts were loose in the cement joints of the brick edging. It all looked good from below and provided a quick getaway... until you tried it and found out lousy contractors had never set them right, the weather had eaten them loose and too many kids wrenching at them had finished the job. Anybody trying to climb down them needed a lot of nerve.

The lightning blossomed again and I saw his outline skirting the back edge of the building at a crouching run and I fired a shot into the air. He looked back, showing the white oval of his face, triggered a shot in my direction, then he grabbed the two loops of the iron rails that hooked into the building and slithered over the top.

I ran then. I took a chance he was alone and crossed between the chimneys and the TV antennas, ducking under the clotheslines strung around the place and reached the spot where he disappeared.

Below me the night was too shadowed, the intensity of the black too deep to pick out any movement and I had to take my chances. I felt the rails under my hands, swung a leg over and felt for the rungs when I heard the scream, a startled yell that twisted into a cry of pure terror and was cut off abruptly as a body hit the concrete yard below with a sickening thud.

There was no sense trying it then. I went back the way I came, past the curious faces looking out the doors at me, ducking back when I let them see the badge in my hand to cut off their questions. I found him lying face up, dead as hell, splashed in red over the garbage and ground, the gun still in his pocket and the fright-look plain on his face. Will Fater wasn’t going anyplace any more.

But I was. I wanted to see what that talk was about he had with Al Reese and Benny Loefert in the back of Bunny’s place.

Chapter Eight

When the lab crew finished and the body was carted away I took Marta back to her apartment. The doctor had dressed the minor flesh wound, a sear across her shoulder that bothered her more because it ripped her clothes than damaged her. She showered, changed into a housedress and made us some coffee, still a little shook up from the initial experience of getting shot at.

The bell rang and Marta went to the door. Captain Oliver and Inspector Bryan walked in, faces impassive. Marta poured them some coffee and they sat down, glad to be in out of the rain. Captain Oliver said, “This is bad, Joe. The pressure’s coming in from upstairs again.”

“So we scrubbed one hood. Why the beef?”

“Voters’ complaints. This is a tight little political group. Practically everybody is registered at the polls and can be swung one way or another.”

“This is police work, not a political football,” I said.

“Maybe so, but when the papers get this it’ll be murder. They’re all hot over this upstate deal and to have it in their back yard can make us look silly. You got any idea where you’re going?”

I nodded. “In a way.”

“It better be more than that,” Bryan growled. “We’re ready to pull a house-to-house search for Gus Wilder next.”

“Try it and you’ll have every damn door slammed in your face,” I reminded him. “You’ll need a warrant to get into every apartment and by that time our boy will be gone. You think this whole neighborhood doesn’t feel what’s going on? It doesn’t take much to put two and two together. They know I’m here and nosing around. They know who I’ve been talking to and what’s been said. They can read the papers and draw a picture.”

“We’re not revealing Fater’s identity yet.”

“Just the same, they know it was me on that roof. From now on, I’m not just a cop on a date with a local girl. They’ll know I’m here on an assignment and will clam up tight. I want a couple of more days to do it my way. There’s something lousy about this whole thing. It doesn’t stick. It has a hitch in it.”

“Like what, Joe?”

“I don’t know.”

“Two days then,” Inspector Bryan reminded me.

“That’ll do it,” I said.

When they left I finished my coffee and sat looking out over the street that had been my playground. I had my feet up on the windowsill watching the rain beat against the glass and Marta came over and perched on the arm of the chair, her hand absently stroking the back of my neck.

“Thinking, Joe?”

I reached out and put my arm around her. Beneath the sheer cloth of the dress she was a warm, vibrant thing full of life. My fingers kneaded the flesh of her hip and I felt her react to my touch, involuntarily drawing closer. The dead lay outside, but inside myself that knot started again in my stomach and ran up through my shoulders into an explosion I couldn’t stop.

“Should I tell you what I’m thinking of?”

“I think I know,” she said.

She came down into my arms slowly, her mouth lovely and moist, meeting mine in a gentle touch that said hello after a long, long time and fought with the years in between and wiped them away in a violent burst of passion. Her tongue was a separate entity that spoke a new language I had never heard and always missed without realizing it

My hands had held a shield and gun too long to be gentle. They were rough when they pushed away fabric to feel the silky smoothness of bare skin beneath, and she never uttered a sound except to moan softly and give herself fully to my inquisitiveness.

There was no policewoman here now... no little Giggie with childish notions; she was a woman enmeshed in emotions suppressed too long and we were both finding the answers with the complete naiveté of kids endowed with the prowess of adults. It was a ritual of honesty and total love that happened and was consummated despite the tension of murder and a storm that attempted to match our own violence, a ritual of absolute abandonment to something we seemed to know would always occur. We handled each other with a frenzy of desire, searching, finding, enjoying until all that was left was utter exhaustion.

Outside the storm lashed the city, but it was an hour before we heard it. Marty stirred beside me, came awake quickly when she knew I was too. “Joe...”

“I have to leave, kid.”

“Why?”

“He’s still loose.”

“Who is he, Joe?”

“I don’t know yet. I can’t be sure.”

“Can you tell me?”

“No.”

“Then I want to go with you.”

“Orders, sugar. You stay. Your part is done. I can’t use you in the job now.”

“Please, Joe.”

“No choice, Marty. It’s guns now. I don’t want you in the middle. It’s all changed, and I want you where I know I can come back to you.”

“Will you?”

I turned and kissed her, felt her tremble slightly and said: “I’ll be back. I have to. We started too long ago to let it end now. It’s you and me now, Marty. We’re back where we started, but it’s better and we have a lot to look forward to. We’re on the straight side and can be the builders. I want you, Marty.”

Very simply, she said, “You have me, Joe. It’s always been that way. There never has been anyone else.”

“I know it,” I grinned.

A kill stirs things up. It’s like having a winning ball club. The fans gather to talk about it, to speculate and chew it to pieces. Donavan’s place was packed and so was Bunny’s, but the one I was looking for wasn’t in either one. But that wasn’t the end. There were a lot of places he could go to.

And I looked in them all. I put the word out and let them take it as they liked. I was a cop with a name he wanted and everybody knew it. It wasn’t going to take long. There was always somebody who wanted a favor or some heat taken off and they’d show sooner or later. While I waited I kept on looking and knew the others were all watching, knowing I was there and it wasn’t over yet, not by a long sight.

It was little Harry Wope who found me. He was buried in the shadows of the corner drug store and whistled as I walked past, stepping far enough out into the light so I’d recognize him and when I moved beside him, sought out the shadows again.

“Scanlon...”

“Hello, Harry.”

“It was Will Fater who got it, wasn’t it?”

“Everybody else is guessing.”

“Not me. I knew what they were gonna pull off. I told you.”

“What else do you know?”

“How much money did Fater have on him?”

“A couple hundred bucks. That’s all.”

“He should have had more,” Harry said. “Al Reese promised him more. I heard him. That stupid Fater, for five grand he’d shoot himself. He had a big reputation, that one did. He never said nothin’, but he had it.”

“We know, Harry.”

“So Reese said five grand.”

“Where would he get it?” I asked him.

“He said he was coming into it. Soon, too. He had Will all worked up. He would’na taken the job on if he wasn’t sure.”

“And where is Reese now?”

“That’s what I wanted to tell you. I seen him by Grafton’s place. Over two blocks and...”

“I know where it is,” I said.

“Reese, he got out of a car and was walking,” Harry Wope told me. “He had on a raincoat and was carrying an umbrella, but I seen his face when he was getting out. A couple of people came along and he ducked down behind that umbrella like he didn’t want to be seen, but I knew who he was.”

“See where he went?”

“Raining too hard. He was up near Paula Lees’ place when I couldn’t see him no more. I didn’t wait around, anyway. I went looking for you.”

“Okay, Harry, thanks. You get the hell out of here and don’t mention seeing me.”

“Sure enough. Not a word. You give that Al Reese what he needs, huh?”

“Don’t worry.”

I waited until Harry was out of sight before crossing the street. I knew where Grafton’s place was. Twenty-five years ago I had run errands for the guy, delivered his orders and fought for my right to sell papers on the corner he occupied.

Fifty feet from the intersection a late-model Chevvy sedan was parked, the doors locked. After an initial glance at it I walked on down the street, casing every building as I went. Any darkened doorway or unlighted window could hide a killer behind it. One try was made, another was possible. Will Fater’s try for me was a money deal, not the original one.

But there was a tie-in there too. If Gus Wilder came into the section, Al Reese could have known about it. Political bosses had to keep their fingers on the pulse of every movement in their area. If there was a bite to be taken out of a money pie Al Reese would want his and anybody standing in his way had to be taken out.

The possibility was plain now. René Mills lost his shot at the dough... Reese wasn’t going to miss his. He could have promised René protection for a price, and even if René got killed for his trouble Reese was going to push it. He wouldn’t put himself in the same class as René, not Al Reese. He had power and cover from the party whom he represented. Anybody circulating in his bailiwick was going to pay off no matter who they were.

Up ahead was Paula Lees’ apartment.

Cute deal, Al, I thought. A guy is holed up and wanting a woman. You make the arrangements for him and catch him with his pants down and put the screws to him. Maybe you’d be doing it right now and I could nail you both at once.

I took the gun out, checked the load in the cylinders and cut in when I came to the worn sandstone stoop. I would have gone up the steps if the sudden brilliance of the lightning flash hadn’t turned night into day and outlined a quick movement from behind the railing that guarded the basement entrance to the tenement across the street

This time I moved as fast as they did, not quickly, just deliberately. As far as they were concerned, I was just another pedestrian. I had stayed out of the glow of the street lights from force of habit and my pause by Paula’s apartment could have been accidental if they hadn’t seen me with the gun in my hand. I bent down, made like I was flipping water from my cuffs, pulled the collar of my trench coat tighter around my neck and ambled on like a guy walking aimlessly after fighting with his wife.

I didn’t look back to see if the act worked. I kept on going until I reached the corner, found the alley in between the stores and squeezed between the garbage cans and refuse cartons stacked shoulder high until I reached the fence, then climbed over it

For a second I had the funny feeling that it was the game again. A long time ago the bunch of us had come through this same alley over the same fence to scramble through the basement of the apartment to get away from Ralph Callahan who was after us for some piece of hell we had just raised. Now it was the other way around and I was the cop.

The cellar doors set at a forty-five degree angle were still the same, boards warped, braces loose and two hinges rusted away. I pulled one up, went down the steps with the light of my pencil flash showing the way, seeing the same old asbestos-wrapped furnace sitting in the middle of the room like a dead, dirty idol, the coal bin on the left gaping blackly. It was neater now than the last time, probably because a fire inspector had checked the premises and squeezed the landlord.

A flight of rickety steps led to the first floor. The door was locked, but a steady push with my shoulder snapped the lock and sent the door slamming open against the wall with a noise that would have gotten anyone alerted.

But it didn’t. It was drowned in the resonating blast of gunfire from the floor above that rolled through the building with punctuated hammering that was sharper than the echoes they made. They came too fast to identify the caliber, but at least three were going, then two, one, and all that was left was the sharp smell of cordite and a dull reverberation that bounced from the walls until it died out in the yells of the neighbors and the sound of a woman screaming for the police somewhere outside.

I stayed close to the wall, took the stairs two at a time, nearly fell over a body and in stumbling saved my neck. A shot from above snapped down, missing me by an inch, powdering plaster and wood chips into my face. Above me, feet went up the staircases, paused, went up again and stopped.

There were too many times when a cop had things taken out of his hands. I had to get him. I took each landing with the .38 ready to reach out for a target, went up the stairs waiting to catch one myself and damn near eager for the opportunity to swap one for the other, but none came my way. The door to the roof was open and without thinking about it I went through into the rain and dove for the shelter of the parapet.

No bullet sought me out. No feet ran from me. There was just that deathly stillness and the sensation that I was all alone. I got up and walked along the edge, peering down into the alleyway. A garbage can rattled, then a board creaked from the fence and the silhouette of a man showed briefly as he slithered over it. I got off a quick shot, even though I knew the range was too long and the light too bad, then went back down the stairs.

Steve Lutz was dead on the steps near the landing, half his head splattered over the wall. Beamish lay face down near the door of Paula Lees’ apartment, his blood puddled all over the floor from a hole in his throat. I kicked the door open not knowing what I was going to find. The light was on in the kitchen and directly under it half sprawled in a chair, was the fat lump of what was left of Al Reese. The bullet that had torn into his chest had left a fist-sized hole in his back and if the signs were right it had been deliberately placed by somebody who had stood in the doorway leading to the bedroom.

She lay on the bed, eyes wide and staring, her body twisted in the agony of torture applied by an expert in the art of taking pleasure from someone else’s pain. She should have been dead. I thought she was. Apparently the other person thought she was too. The motion of her chest was barely perceptible, a minor spasmodic movement that was involuntary on her part, an effort of a human body hanging on to life.

When her lips moved I bent over and said, “Paula... it’s Joe Scanlon.”

She moved her mouth in an effort to repeat my name.

“Paula... who was it?”

Her voice was a weak whisper I could hardly hear. I bent my head closer and heard her say, “Al... was going to... let me... work. He... he said so. He wanted a... favor.”

“What favor, Paula?”

“Meet... somebody here,” she finally got out.

“Who, Paula, who?”

Instead of answering she said, “Al... was supposed to... come first. But... he did.” Her breathing came in a series of short gasps and she had trouble speaking. “He was... terrible. He did...” Whatever she was remembering stopped the flow of words.

After a few seconds her mouth moved again. “Al... came in. He... sat down. I tried to scream... then... then he hit me with something.”

Quietly, I asked again, “Who, Paula?”

Her eyes came back from the limbo they had been looking into. The glassy look vanished momentarily and they moved to focus on mine. I reached out to touch her and she drew back, the blood suddenly spurting from the ugly gash in her temple and her mouth opened to scream. The sound never came out. She died with her face contorted, mouth twisted in terror and in her eyes a hopeless look of staring into death itself.

The first squad car pulled to the curb outside and I heard heavy feet on the stairs. They came in and photographed the scene, took my statement, carted out the bodies past the group on the sidewalk who braved the rain to satisfy their morbidity, then Oliver and Bryan took me aside and it was like the first night when I was called in to look at the remains of Doug Kitchen lying on the sidewalk.

Captain Oliver said, “We can’t let this one ride, Joe. It’s wide open now. We’re going to have our heads handed to us and yours comes in on a silver platter.”

“Screw it.”

“You were there,” Inspector Bryan told me bleakly.

“Sure, too late. I had no choice. I told you I saw somebody across the street. Let’s say it was Beamish and Loefert. Al Reese set up a date with our killer and had them along for insurance. Only trouble was, the killer was wise, popped Reese and waited for Beamish and Loefert and got them too.”

Bryan nodded. “We’ll have to wait for ballistics to run a test, but the bullets in Beamish and Loefert are the same calibre as the one that went into the wall over your head. We haven’t found the one that went through Reese yet. None of them came from those hoods’ guns.”

We stood there in the rain with nothing much to say until Captain Oliver coughed and without looking at me, said, “You’ll have to come off it, Joe. We can’t take the heat that’s going to come.”

“You gave me two days, remember?”

“We’ll have to take it back. If the Lees dame had talked maybe we could have had something, but we’re still up in the ah-.”

“Let me have tonight then.”

“No more,” Bryan said abruptly. “It won’t do any good, but you have that much. Now let’s get the hell out of this rain.”

Chapter Nine

I had to walk it out. I could never go back to where I left her waiting for me until it was finished. I circled the perimeter of the place that had given me birth and raised me with the smell of it in my nose and the feel of it in my fingers and thought about what had happened and tugged at the string that led to the end, and all I could do was unravel an unending ball of confusion.

At the corner I stopped and opened the call box, rousted Mack Brissom from the coffee he was having over his late reports and gave him the details of the night. He said, “Tough, Joe.”

“That’s the way it goes, Mack. We checked out your inquiry about Gus Wilder and...”

“Forget it” he said, “Wilder’s out.”

“What?”

“His body turned up three hours ago. He knocked himself off with a.22 target pistol the same day he was supposed to appear for trial. I got a Coroner’s report right here on my desk. He’s been dead all this time.”

“Damn,” I said. I hung up and shut the door on the call box and went back down the street

The knots were in the string now and it was pulled tight. It was a different string, and the knots were tied in an odd direction, but they made the shape of a noose and were a terrible thing to look at.

I knew where I was going now. It was the only place I could go. No, Paula Lees hadn’t talked, but had said something without a word that was more important than anyone else. She had told me the same thing Papa Jones had told me that I didn’t want to hear and deliberately let it pass.

A lot of things spoke the truth. The simple fact that I was here again was part of it. I couldn’t help coming back either. I reached the corner and walked down to where the police car was parked and had the officer drive me to the street I hated to see. Since that morning, the construction crews had begun to move in their equipment that would demolish the whole place to make way for a new project building financed by the taxpayers and turned into a handsome garbage pit by the same people the housing project dispossessed.

I got out of the car slowly, dismissed the driver and stood looking up at the darkened windows of the apartment. The cold rain pelted the glass, making it look like a black mirror, an evil, nasty pair of eyes in the face of an evil, nasty building. There was something disgusting about it all, something foul and dirty, even unthinkable.

Up there, behind that darkened window, I had to kill myself. Up there I’d know what it would be like to lie dead, knowing the feeling and sight of featureless expression, the laxity of death.

The gun in my pocket seemed too heavy, so I just took it out and crossed the street with it in my hand. The front door was open. So was the inside one. Behind it was the yawning, cavernous mouth of the pitch black stairway and corridor.

One flight up and to the front.

In my mind I was picturing my face on the floor, half turned into the light, eyes partially open and the jaw slack. All consciousness gone. All conscience gone too. Nothing left. Just dead.

Under my feet the carpet was worn, and each step brought a musty, aged smell closer. From habit born long ago I stepped over the step that had pulled away from the wall, and as a kid would, counted my way toward the landing.

Four more to go. Then three, two, one and I was there. The door was ten feet away. I didn’t hurry. I wasn’t in a hurry to see what I looked like dead.

So I went slowly and when I had the knob under my hand I thumbed back the .38 Positive and thought how stupid it all was. And how it started. In a way, it had two starting points, but the first was last and the last first. At the last second I was thinking back over the simplicity and stupidity of the whole thing.

I pushed the door open with the nose of the gun. I didn’t need a light. One of the kerosene lanterns from the construction site outside was enough to make a pale orange glow enough to see by. He was sprawled out in an old beat up chair, the smoke from his cigarette drifting up lazily from his mouth.

I said, “Hello, Larry.”

And the one they had called Chief Crazy Horse, my own twin I had thought was dead a long time ago, turned and looked at me with that wild grin he could always muster up and said, “I was wondering when you’d turn up, Joe.”

“I’m here.”

“Too bad.”

“Is it?”

He dragged on the butt and flipped the remains of it across the floor. “You’re on the spot now, aren’t you?”

“I am.” It was a statement, not a question.

He looked at me and shrugged. “You should have known better.”

“I wish I had.” I paused and stared at him, seeing my own face reflected there. As long as he didn’t move or speak, it was me. Physically, there was no difference. Oh, a little, maybe, but time had done different things to both of us. Only mentally were we different and the gap between us was vast.

Chief Crazy Horse. He had been aptly named.

It wasn’t easy to face, but it was true. He was crazy. He always had been.

“Why, Larry?”

“Does it make a difference?”

“Maybe.”

He grinned again and stretched. “Listen, brother of mine, you got your ways and I got mine. We’re still brothers, ain’t we? Like I said, you’re on a spot.”

“You didn’t answer me, Larry.”

“Joe... come off it. You mean why what?”

“Start at the beginning, Larry, or shall I do it for you?”

“Let’s hear your version, brother. You always were the smart one. You liked to play the cop part and now you’re doing it right. So tell me. I’d like to hear about it.”

The gun was warmer now, nearly too warm to hold. It was a living thing there in my hand, held low at my side.

“You always enjoyed the wild life, Larry.”

“True. So who wants to be a slob? You think I could take this place like them others out there? Man, I wanted more than that”

“There were other ways of getting it.”

“Not for me, brother boy. After I faked getting myself knocked off by a land mine during the war, I picked up a record fast. Black market crap and all that under a real hero’s name who got checked off as a deserter. I wasn’t the employable type. Besides, I didn’t go for that eight-to-five routine.” He grinned again as if I understood. “But you ain’t telling me your version, Joe.”

“Suppose I pick it up from before Montreal.”

“Go ahead.”

“You tried a small bank job and bungled it. You were on the inside with the wrong people and got wind of the Montreal deal and hijacked the money from the driver who carried it.”

“Right so far, kid, but it wasn’t me who bungled the job. It was the idiot I had with me who got scared.”

I ignored him and said, “You made your way down here, coming home to hide like a salmon going upstream to breed where he was born himself.”

For a second Larry scowled, trying to understand the analogy, then broke into a chuckle and looked at me. “You got a way with words, boy.”

“Why here, Larry?”

“Where else? It seemed good enough. It would have been great if I didn’t make that call from Papa Jones’ place. I never figured the old goat would know me, but I guess he did. Then René spotted me and there I was.” He looked at the ceiling absently. “That dirty pig tried to screw me out of the cash. What got me was he thought I didn’t know what he was up to. Man, I was on to him from the first. Like that wasn’t bad enough, old Noisy Stuccio had to make a go at it with Hymie backing him up.” Larry glanced over at me and added, “They died easy, boy. Real easy.”

“Doug Kitchen didn’t.”

“What the hell... if he sounded off I’d have had it. Nobody else knew I was around.”

“Al Reese did.”

Larry grunted, his mouth twisting into a sneer. “That louse! Sure, René put him wise to get some cover and Reese was going to hit me up for a bundle. He got hit, all right. A permanent hit.” He swung around in his chair and curled a leg under him, nothing showing in his face at all. It was still just a game to him, a rooftop game that could end when he wanted to call it quits. “Hell, Joe, he woulda got to me sooner, only he didn’t know where I was. I had to get out of René’s place and I came here. Maybe he figured it out the same way you did, but he ran me down. If he had the chance he would have bumped me, only then he never would have gotten the money at all. So he sits here and gases with me... tries to soften me up by paying my way with some hooker named Paula Lees.”

“And you made the date,” I stated.

“Sure, why not? I knew what he was setting me up for. You think I didn’t know the mob had men in this neighborhood? Hell, brother boy, I seen ’em. I knew the word was out. I just couldn’t figure how they got the answer.”

“You aren’t that hard to decipher, Larry.”

He frowned again, his mouth tight while he thought about it. “Balls,” he said.

“You knew I was here, didn’t you?”

The frown went into an immediate grin, a kid having a change of pace in the conversation. “Sure I did. I seen you outside looking up here once when you were with little Giggie. Big broad now, that one.”

“Know why I was here?”

His shrug was elaborate. “Sure,” he repeated. “Cops and kills go together. This is your turf too, brother boy. They’d call you in for it. Didn’t they?”

“That’s right.”

“So what’s the complaint? Who got bumped? You think anybody’s gonna miss them slobs?”

“That isn’t the point, Larry.”

“Nuts,” he grunted.

“Where’s the money, kid?”

His smile was slow and came on as if I had told a joke. “You want a hunk too?”

“I don’t want any part of it at all.”

“No? Well, it’s where nobody can ever find it, brother boy.”

“What do you bet?”

Whatever was in my tone reached him and he stiffened in the chair. “What’re you getting at, Joe?”

“You never change, Larry. In some things you never change. Just as you came back to where it all started, your habits are the same. Want me to tell you where it is? In the same place you always used to hide things when you were a kid, in that space under the stairs we found together when we were about ten years old. You think I don’t remember it, but I can take you right to it and pull those boards off and show you whatever it was you hid there. A couple of suitcases maybe?”

The knuckles of his fingers were tight around the arm of the chair, biting deep into the padding. His one secret that he guarded so well was no secret at all and he was coming apart right before my eyes.

“Damn you,” he said.

“So it’s over, Larry. Let’s go easy, okay?”

“You... my brother... you’re gonna try and...”

“Larry,” I said, “you tried to kill me earlier. You didn’t care if I was your brother or not.”

His voice was cold, toneless. It sounded to me the way it must have sounded to René, Stuccio and the others. I wondered if he yelled that wild Indian yell with them like he did with Doug Kitchen that Paula Lees heard and told me about. That was the little thing that had bugged me. That yell. He used to do it when he was playing his Indian games. I should have known then.

He said, “You should have minded your own business.”

“I was, Larry,” I said softly.

He didn’t look like me then. It wasn’t my face for a second. It was somebody else, a person I had never known and would never know. It was the face the dead men had seen, the face that had tortured Paula Lees into submission and now it was looking at me.

“I’m going, Joe.”

“With me,” I said.

“Not with you. Alone. I’ve always been alone.”

Before the words were out I knew what would happen. It was the one thing I had forgotten about. “Chief Crazy Horse,” I said. “You really are crazy.”

His hand was a blur of motion as he dug for the gun, the professional killer going into the act he knew best. But he forgot the old axiom of not being able to outdraw a man who already has a gun in his hand.

My own training and instincts reacted with his own and I felt the .38 buck once in my fist and a small, bluish dot suddenly centered in the middle of his forehead, snapping his head back with a jerk. Very slowly my twin sighed and sat down in the chair again.

And very slowly the face of the man I didn’t know turned into the face of one I knew all too well as it relaxed in the deep black of death.

Outside the rain would be a cleansing thing. There was a woman waiting for me to come back. There were people to be told that the terror was over. But it was going to take a lot of rain to wash everything away and a lot of woman to make me forget the memory of the night

It would come, though.

I went back to where I started from, turned my back to it and walked to where the future was waiting for me.

Content

Mickey Spillane
Killer Mine

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine