Me, Hood!

First publication in Great Britain, 1964

Chapter 1

Newbolder and Schmidt were decent about it. They came in, nodded and sat down at their table with coffee in front of them and let me alone to finish my supper. Sometimes you just can’t figure cops. But once they made their touch, there was no sense running. Try it and you can get shot down. Go along with the game and you have a chance. Besides, the Cafeteria was a popular place and the owner a swell egg who didn’t deserve getting shook by a big punch right in the middle of his rush hour.

So I nodded back and let them know I was ready when I cleaned my plate and that there wouldn’t be any fireworks or tough talk no matter how big the beef was. And it was a big beef. Real big. I was a murder suspect and in a way it was lucky the cops made the scene first because in the same neighborhood the Stipetto brothers were canvassing the area for me too and with them it meant playing guns.

With them I could play. I had a .45 calibre instrument that could sound off loud and clear, but with cops you don’t play like that. On somebody else the fuzz would have stepped up and made the pinch without waiting. For this one time I had to be an exception because of what happened a year ago, and for that they were being decent. Something like General Arnold’s boot if you got enough smarts to know what I mean.

The cops didn’t watch me. I was there, part of their peripheral vision, they weren’t in any hurry at all and were glad to sit in out of the rain and the cold for a few minutes. They had the faces of cops all over the world that you can’t miss if you’re in the business on one side or the other.

Across the room with his back to the wall, Wally Pee who ran numbers for Sal Upsidion started to sweat and couldn’t finish what was on his tray. He kept glancing from Newbolder and Schmidt to Izzy Goldwitz, who was at the counter getting seconds, because Izzy had six grand in cash in the overnight bag he carried and with Sal Upsidion you didn’t give any excuses if it didn’t get turned in. When Izzy paid the cashier and started back he caught Wally’s signal and turned white, but by then it was too late to do anything except finish supper, so he sat down and tried to bluff it out.

I could have gone over and told them, but it didn’t make any difference anyway and for them it was better to sweat a little so that the next time they’d be on their toes more. Newbolder’s quick case of the place didn’t make them since I was his target and not much else mattered, so the numbers boys were off the hook for this time, anyway.

Funny, funny.

New York after dark, a vivid chameleon who by day was a roaring scaly dragon of business and ceremony, and by night a soft quivering thing because the guts of the city had gone home leaving the shell to be invaded by parasites.

The few who stayed, and the tourists, kept to the Gay White Way as they used to name it, clubbing, bar hopping or taking in a show. But the perimeter of life had closed down to the very heart of the city. Beyond the perimeter was where the dying came. A few arteries of light and life extended crosstown, went up a ways and down a ways, but that was all. The great verdant cancer of Central Park was like a sparkling jewel, laced with the multicolor of taxis whose beams probed ahead of them with twin fingers, always searching. Like Damocles.

Around me the restaurant was packed with people from Jersey, Brooklyn, the Island, all getting ready to go home or take in the town a little. The regulars were there too, the handful of natives whose home was Manhattan no matter what. Some were night people like me and Wally Pee and Izzy; the others came because the food was good and inexpensive.

I wondered what my chances were on the rap. They didn’t look good at all.

Somebody had knocked off Penny Stipetto. Two days before I had belted his ass from one end of 45th and Second all the way to the next corner for shaking down Rudy Max and when he healed up he strapped on a rod and went looking for me with a skinful of big H to keep his courage up.

Word travels fast in this town. I got the news and passed it back that I was ready and available any time, any place and if I saw him first he was going to get laid out.

Trouble was, I didn’t see him first.

Somebody else did and they found Penny Stipetto wedged behind a couple of garbage cans two blocks away from my pad with a hole in his head.

That was enough for the remaining brothers Stipetto. They spread out a net across the city that was as efficient as any the fuzz could throw and pulled the strings tight until I only had one block to run in and one place to go.

The condemned man ate a hearty meal.

Hell, I was glad Newbolder and Schmidt found me first. This was the age of enlightened crime and a gang shoot-out comes only of immediate necessity. Revenge is a thing of the past except for the extreme occasion, and if the law will do the job equally as well, then let it go, man. In fact, the brothers Stipetto would only be too happy to help the fuzz nail my hide. They’d make damn sure somebody saw me in the area at the time Penny took the big slide and damn sure any alibi I had would fold if they had to remove it forever.

In other words, I was a dead duck. I had no alibi to begin with unless a warm solo pad could be called one, the hole in Penny’s head was big enough to be made by at least a .45 and no spent slug was recovered for comparison. I had the motive, the time, a probable weapon and on top of it all, the critical, anti-social personality that, according to the psycho meds, made such a deed possible.

In short, I was a hood.

Newbolder sipped his coffee and glanced at his watch. He wasn’t rushing me, but I knew he’d like to get off his shift on time and a cop can only be decent so long. By then Wally Pee and Izzy Goldswitz had caught the pitch and were begging me with their eyes to get the hell out before the cops decided to case the place for any other interesting characters and spotted them.

Let them take care of themselves, I thought, and went back to the Hungarian goulash. It was good and there was no telling when I’d be getting another plate of the stuff.

I had almost finished when the broad sat down. Like they’ll always do, she sat down directly opposite me rather than at the side, trying to make out as if she had the table all to herself. I knew she was an out-of-towner when she ate without taking the dishes off her tray, something a cafeteria regular never would do.

There was something odd about her I couldn’t place, but in New York you don’t stare too long or take deliberate second looks because privacy is a funny thing, like the props in theatre-in-the-round. Privacy exists because you pretend nothing else is there and in a chow joint you’re expected to obey the rules of the game.

But I couldn’t help the second look. I made it as surreptitious as possible and found the flaw. The tall girl with the deep chestnut hair was made up to perfection, if perfection meant deliberately disguising a classic beauty to become just another fairly pretty dame worth smiling at sometimes, but not much more.

They do that sometimes. Broads get screwy ideas about their looks and plenty of times I’ve seen real treats done up in trick suits in the beatnik shops.

Who are you today, honey — Hepburn? You could be LaMarr if you liked. You have a luscious mouth with the kind of pouty lips that can kiss like crazy but the lipstick is wrong. That eyebrow pencil accent is way off too. Way off. And you can’t quite erase genes that put a tricky, exotic slant in your eyes and cheekbones with cleverly applied green shadows and too-pale makeup.

When she shrugged the white trench coat off, I saw it was only her face that had been changed to the mediocre. Nothing could have been done to alter the magnificence of her body. There was just too much of her, just too much big, lovely much.

The condemned man ate a hearty meal. Visually, that is.

So while they waited for me, those outside watching to make sure those inside didn’t slip, I feasted a little bit and knew I was wearing a crooked grin that couldn’t be helped but could be hidden if I chewed hard enough.

Newbolder had shifted his seat a little so he could see around the broad, not giving up his cop’s habits for any reason, and I finished my goulash and started in on my pie.

It was just a voice. It was strangely low, detached and was there without seeming to come from any one point. It was almost totally lost in the grand hum of voices that kept the room in motion and for a second I couldn’t place it.

When I did I kept on eating, doing a quick think because it was the broad speaking to me con style without moving her lips or changing her expression, and all the while managing to eat as if she were completely alone.

“Can you talk without looking at me?”

In my racket you learn to play by ear real fast or get dead real fast and I had nothing to lose at all any more.

So I said, “Go ahead, honey,” and like her, my mouth didn’t move either except to eat.

The broad caught it immediately and said, “You did time?” and there was a hesitancy in her voice.

“No. Not quite. The fuzz would like me to go down though.”

“Service record?”

That was a peculiar angle for a new line to take. I was trying to figure her for a high class hooker or a tomato with a hot item for sale, but this bit threw the picture out of focus. I did a mental shrug and said, “A whole war, kid, but that was twenty years ago.” I half-laughed and smothered it. “Even got a few medals out of it.”

“I’m in trouble.”

“It figures,” I said.

She buttered a piece of roll, bit off a bite and glanced vacantly around the room. I cut into my pie with my fork and concentrated on my last meal.

“You’ll have to help,” she finally got out.

I swallowed and forked out another bit of pie. “Why?”

“You’re the only one who looks capable.”

“Of what?”

She lifted her coffee cup and sipped at it. “Killing somebody if you have to.”

This time it wasn’t so easy to swallow the pie. I kept chewing, wondering why the hell I always drew the loonies. Sooner or later they always wind up in my lap.

“Come off it, baby,” I told her softly.

She didn’t try to argue about it. She made it a square, simple statement that put her either way out or close inside and left me right in the middle no matter what happened.

She said, “My name is Karen Sinclair. I’m a government agent working with Operation Hightower. In my mouth I have a capsule containing a strip of microfilm that must be delivered to the head of our bureau at once. It’s a matter of national safety. Is that clear? National security is involved. I’m going to bite into a roll, push it inside and put the rest of the roll down. When I leave you pick that roll up and get it in the hands of the nearest F.B.I. agent. Can you do that?”

“Sure.” It was all I could think of to say. It still wasn’t making sense. Finally, I added, “What’s the act for?”

Unconcernedly, she said, “Because outside there are three men who are going to kill me to get that capsule back and we can’t let it happen.”

I was almost done with my pie and couldn’t stall much longer. Newbolder and Schmidt were getting impatient.

“More, baby.”

With an involuntary gesture, she bit her lip, remembered in time to fake it and sipped at her coffee again.

“They were almost ready to take me on the street. They know I have no contact here and am headed for a certain point so they suppose I really stopped to eat. What they don’t realize is that I spotted them.”

“Look, if you’re serious...”

“I’m serious.” Her voice was the same flat monotone, yet had a new note to it, quiet and deadly. She wasn’t lying.

“Hell, girl, I can...”

“You can do nothing, mister. If you want to help do as you’re told. That’s the only way this information can be passed on to the right people. You’re the only chance I have. I know what I’m up against. I’ve been in this game a long time too and knew the odds when I started. I hate to have to pass this to amateurs but when I picked you it was because you had all the signs of the kind of man who can live outside the law and still hang on to certain principles. I hope I’m right.”

She picked up a roll, broke it in half and nibbled into it. What she did, she did quickly, putting the remainder of the roll back on the plate, then washing it down with the rest of her coffee. She finished quickly without seeming to be in a hurry, put her arms back into the trench coat, belted it and picked up her pocketbook.

Before she left I felt her eyes scan my face briefly and sensed the greenish heat of them.

“Thanks,” she said, then turned and walked away.

Indifferently, I picked the half a roll up, dunked it in my coffee, and chewed into it. The capsule was a brittle plastic against my teeth and when I wiped my mouth I spit it out in my hand and quietly stuck it in my watch pocket, then finished the roll.

If it was a gag, it was a beauty.

If it wasn’t, then there was big trouble happening too fast for me to think out.

Newbolder stood up and so did I. It was about that time and now I was going to have the blocks put to me but good. Both cops knew I had the .45 on me and although they knew it was there for the Stipetto crowd they didn’t take the big chance and kept their hands held just-so right above their Police Specials. This one time they’d play it neat all the way to the squad car for old time’s sake and after that all bets were off.

I put on my hat, picked up my coat when two shots blew the night apart outside and a great blast tore the window out of the restaurant and scattered fragments all over the place. Women screamed as though they were given a downbeat and tables overturning in the sudden rush away from the front were like the crashing cymbals of a mad symphony.

I saw Newbolder and Schmidt pull at their guns and run for the door as another handful of shots were triggered off and in that one instant the door was open as they ran through I saw the big girl falling against a car at the curb while the gun in her hand pointed at something out of sight and spouted tiny red flashes.

The decision wasn’t mine at all. She had made it for me. I did the same thing everybody else did and ran, letting the crowd cover me. There was only one difference. I knew where I was running. I got to the door leading to the dishwashing section, went through quickly and paused, looking for another exit. I spotted it down the end, took a fast look through the small window in the door behind me and knew that it was no kind of a gag at all. A harmless looking rabbity guy whom I had unconsciously noticed trying to come across the room against the fleeing crowd had reached my table and was going through the remnants around the girl’s plate. He finished, made a gesture toward where I had been sitting and stopped, then looked around thoughtfully and followed the crowd toward the main kitchen doors.

I would have liked it if he had come in beside me, but he hadn’t as yet. He would, but I wasn’t going to wait.

Any broad that would go all the way out, even knowing she was going to get hit, just to deliver a small package, needed a hand up. I fingered out the capsule and looked at it for the first time. It was transparent and inside was a packed white powder. Clever. It could appear to be a medicine. But there was a faint pinpoint of dark against the plastic where a corner of hidden microfilm touched it. I grinned, put it back in my pocket and took off for the doorway.

It swung out into a corridor lit by a single overhead bulb. By the exit doorway was a light switch I flicked off so I wouldn’t step out silhouetted against a bright room.

My precautions almost worked.

Almost. Not quite.

There was a funny shock you hear rather than feel when metal hits bone and an overwhelming stuffiness began to smother me and I knew that I hadn’t made it after all.

Chapter 2

All right, I thought, where the hell am I now? I realized I was conscious without first experiencing sight or sound, a peculiar awareness that was common to a person coming out of a deep sleep. I lay there a moment, deliberately thoughtful, concentrating on the moment, trying to retrieve my last hours of remembrance.

They came with the physical sensation of restriction and with a sudden jolt I felt the ropes that bit into my ankles and wrists. I was sitting up, hands and legs tied to a chair, my mouth open slackly and my head hanging forward limply. For a while I stayed like that, watching my feet and thinking. Just thinking.

From behind me the girl said, “Why did you bring him here, Fly? You crazy?”

A nervous, slimey voice said, “Maybe you got a better idea? Why you think Big Step made me stay back there. He figured this guy might pull something and he sure did. That he sure did.”

“Big Step didn’t want him here. He wasn’t going to bring him here. They was supposed to go someplace in Jersey.”

“Sure they was, but who knew this punk had guns around? Outside he had two guys and a broad who started shooting up then Carl and Moe figured they was part of this guy’s bunch and cut loose at ’em. Then them two cops come outa the joint and everything goes to hell, like. Man, ain’t nothing like that since that business in Havana before Castro.”

“I don’t care,” the girl insisted, “you better take him someplace else.”

“Not me, Lisa, not me. You think Big Step won’t want him even more now? First Penny dead, now Little Step and Carl and Moe. Big Step, he’s gonna wanta carve on this here punk now for sure and whoever puts him outa reach is in for it.”

“Listen, Fly, first thing the fuzz does is look around Big Step’s places and that means the first thing they come here. This looks good with him here? Big Step wants a kidnapping rap besides? Maybe he can cover for the shooting... he woulda been somewhere else while it was going on, but this he won’t hold still for.”

The one called Fly pushed back a chair and walked around the room. I knew the guy. He was a cheap hood from the east side who did errands for the Stipetto brothers and lived off the white Horse he peddled around the neighborhood. He was his own best customer.

“So what’ll I do?”

Lisa said, “Go bring up a car. We can get him over back of the store until we hear from Big Step.”

Fly was glad to have somebody else make the decision. He grunted an acknowledgment, came over to me and yanked my head up. I kept my eyes closed and played it cute.

He said “You awake, Ryan? Come on, punk. Up. Wake up.” He gave me a backhand across the jaw that didn’t do much except make me put down another mental mark in his dead book. “Quit stallin’, Ryan. You hear me?”

“Let him be,” Lisa cut in. “You sapped him pretty hard.”

“Damn’ right I did. This boy carries a big piece. You see that .45 I took off’n him?”

“I saw it,” Lisa said, her tone bored.

“He had a cap of H on him too. You know that?”

This time Lisa sounded more interested. “Him? I didn’t know this big coot blasted any?”

“He carried it. In his watch pocket.”

“Well, he always was a nervy guy. So now we know. He’s like all the rest. Got to get his nerve up a vein.”

“He won’t get this one. I’m running short myself and I won’t have time to get to Ike South if we gotta drag him around.” He let my head go and deliberately, I let it slump back down.

Now everything was screwed up proper. Real snafu. The one thing that broke me out of the big bind in the restaurant winds up in a hype’s pocket and I’m worse off than I ever was.

Think, boy, I told myself. Think awfully hard. Life in college those two years way back so long ago. Show your book learning. You got going against you only one scrawny doped up punk and a broad Big Stipetto kept on his side. How formidable could they be?

Pretty formidable. Before I could think Fly swung at the back of my head and that far off sound of metal on bone, quieted by a small layer of flesh in between, reached me from far off and the black was with me again.

When sense and sound and sight came back, it flushed a searing pain down the back of my skull into my spine. It lasted a few minutes before settling down to a steady throbbing at the base of my head. This time I was on the floor, my hands behind me, my ankles tied and drawn up so they touched my fingers. In the old days they used to throw a loop around your neck too so that any movement would mean you choked yourself to death.

Fly said, “He’s okay now. You okay, Ryan?”

I swore at him.

“See, I told you he was all right. I don’t know why the hell you was worried about him. Big Step is only gonna knock him off anyway. Now you wait here and don’t leave, you hear?”

“I’m not staying...”

“Maybe you’d like for me to pass that on to Big Step. He’d flatten your face agin, you give him any trouble now. Maybe nobody’ll come in, but if’n they do, somebody better be here to steer ’em off.”

“You hurry,” Lisa sulked.

“Nuts, baby. Nobody’s hurryin’ Big Step. First I gotta find him. He ain’t gonna be a happy one when I do. With Little Step dead he’s liable to come over here running. Maybe he’ll want to wait to enjoy what he’s gonna do even more. You just stay put.”

Fly left without saying anything further. I lay there staring at the dark, until the line of light that marked the door suddenly blossomed and the switch clicked the room into a bright, painful glare.

Lisa said, “You’re sure a trouble maker, Ryan.”

A long time ago Lisa Williams had been a beautiful doll. She had soloed at the Copa, done two musicals on Broadway and seemed headed for Hollywood. She was still beautiful in one way. There weren’t many girls who were built like her. She was one full breasted, heavy-thighed bundle of sex that was a marvel to look at.

Then you reached her face. Something had happened to it. A car accident could have done it. So could a pair of brutal fists. Big Primo Stipetto didn’t like his sex machines playing around in other back yards. In his own with his kid brother Penny, it was even worse.

I said, “Hello, Lisa. It’s been pretty long.”

“Hasn’t it though.” She paused, looked quickly at her hands, then said absently, “What’d you want to get messed up with Big Step for?”

“I didn’t know I was.”

“He’s real old fashioned, Ryan. Anyone who touches his kid brother goes face to face with him. You shouldn’t’ve killed the kid.”

“Look... I didn’t kill the kid.”

“Oh Ryan...”

I sucked my breath in, held it and shook my head to clear it. “Penny Stipetto was a cinch to get bumped one day. So he came after me and if he had tried it I would have taken him apart. Somebody else did it, though. Not me.”

“Ryan... I...”

“Forget it, kid.”

She watched me a moment, biting her lower lip between her teeth. “I can’t forget it. I remember... other things.”

“Well don’t then.”

“That’s not easy to do.”

“Give it a hard try.”

“Don’t be so damn tough, Irish. Maybe I just don’t like to be in somebody’s debt. Ever think of it that way? Just because you kept that crazy Doe Wenzel from shooting me and took the slug yourself... oh, hell.”

“Listen,” I told her, “forget the bit. You don’t owe me anything.”

A cramp caught at the muscles in my lower back and I arched against the ropes. I could feel the tendons pull taut from my neck down and for a full minute the paralyzing agony of the thing held me rigid.

Before I could stop her she was on her knees crying softly, her fingers tearing at the knots on the rope and then suddenly I was free to move and the relief of it was almost too much to take. I lay there and tried to come back to normal slowly and when I made it I said, “Thanks.”

“Who was I fooling anyway,” Lisa said.

We both heard the door slam out front at the same time. I waved her out quickly, shut the door and put my ear to it. Fly came back in the other room, breathing hard, his voice tight with excitement. “I got Big Step right off on the phone. By damn, he’s coming over now. You hear that... now. Well have a real party, by damn. That wise punk’ll get his good for sure now. We’re gonna do it right here in about five minutes. Boy, I’m gonna enjoy tellin’ that punk!”

His feet came across the room, he yanked the door open and there I stood, grinning at him. It took a good three seconds before his hopped up mind realized the full implications of what he was seeing, then before he could move I chopped one across his jaw to shut him down. I put too much mad behind it. He was too small and I was too big for so much mad. He half flew back across the room, skidding on his back, then rolled once and lay in a soft heap with blood running down his chin and his breath dragging in through a twisted jaw.

I found my .45 in his waistband, then probed through his pockets for the capsule. When I didn’t find it I tried the seams, the linings, his shoes and every place he could have had it on him. But it wasn’t there.

Lisa said suddenly, “Ryan... Big Step...”

I nodded. “Yeah. Five minutes.” I had maybe two left. I couldn’t afford to take the chance on staying. I got up, looked at her squarely and said, “He took a cap off me. I need it.” When her eyes went funny I added, “I’m not on the stuff. There was something else in that cap besides H.”

“I’ll... I’ll try,” she said hesitantly.

“Okay baby. And thanks again. Just tell Primo Stipetto Fly did a lousy job tying me up. Now hold still a second.”

She saw what I was going to do and never moved. I hit her just right so there could be no doubt about what happened when Big Step came in. I put her down easy and got out of there.

I got word to Pete-the-Dog to meet me at Tony Bay’s deli and he left his news stand long enough to fake picking up a sandwich. It was a smart move because Pete told me both Newbolder and Schmidt had been alternating holding a steady stakeout on my apartment and detailed a guy new to plainclothes to watch him and a few others on the block. Homicide had a blanket over the area and I was to be the pigeon.

Pete said, “You’re nuts to move around daytimes, Ryan.”

“I got no choice, kid. Look you hear any word about Penny Stipetto?”

“Word? Man, that’s all I hear. You’re their boy, you know that.”

“But you know better.”

“Sure,” Pete nodded, “I do, but I ain’t Big Step. After the other brother catching it he’s laying it all on you. I’m hearing thing’s would scare a snake.”

“I got a favor coming, Pete?”

“Anytime. Just anytime.”

“Start asking. Somebody around must’ve seen something when Penny got it.”

“In this town two blocks away is somebody else’s turf, Irish. Over there they’re more scared of the Stipettos than they like you. These days it’s real nervous.”

“So ask around. Don’t stick your neck out, but see what you can pick up.”

“Okay, I can do that. Who you want off your neck first, the fuzz or Step?”

I grinned at him, just a little guy, a nobody with a paper stand, but a heart as big as your hat and ready to do anything for a friend he was asked to.

“Any help in either direction will be fine,” I told him.

He let out a low chuckle and picked up his wrapped sandwich. “Boy, your connections sure went sour fast. I thought you had an in with the fuzz after that job last year. I thought you was some kind of hero.”

“Nobody’s nothing with the murder squad when they think you pulled a big hit. They gave me one break. They won’t give me two.”

“Tough. Anything you want from the house?”

“No. I can get in if I want to. Better if I stayed away though. If you pick up anything, call me at Andy’s.”

“Right.”

I plucked a late copy of the paper from his pocket. “This mine?”

Pete-the-Dog nodded, grinned and walked away. I took the paper out the back door with barely a nod at Tony Bay and opened it up in the alley.

My publicity was a full page wide.

In brief, it stated that in an attempt to apprehend a suspected killer, a gunfight ensued with the wanted man’s confederates during which time four persons were killed and several injured. Among the dead were Vincent (Little Step) Stipetto, Carl Hoover and Moe Green, associates of the notorious Primo (Big Step) Stipetto. The other dead man was identified as one Lewis Coyne, address unknown. Two other men engaged in the gunfight escaped, as did “Irish” Ryan, the one suspected of having gunned down Fred (Penny) Stipetto.

For a street shooting of that size, the account was awfully vague. I was suspected of being a target for the Stipettos, yet accused of having them on my side, their diversionary shooting getting me off the hook. Nobody seemed to have pieced the thing together and if they had, it wasn’t given to the reporters.

Karen Sinclair was listed as critically wounded and taken to Bellevue Hospital and identified as a secretary in the FCC offices in Manhattan, but that was all.

And I was in the middle of a real fine mess. Like before, everybody wants to kill me and while they try I’m supposed to deliver a lost state secret to somebody who will nab me if I do.

Great life for a hood.

From a luncheonette near Seventh I called the hospital. I gave a phony name, said I was an AP correspondent and queried the operator about the condition of Karen Sinclair. Habit got the better of her and she put me through to the floor. Someone told me Karen Sinclair was still on the critical list and not available for an interview. I thanked them and hung up. I changed phones before making the next call, figuring that if the Sinclair dame had been telling the truth, there’d be Federal fuzz running down every lead they got.

The operator at the precinct house switched me into the office and a heavy voice said, “Newbolder speaking.”

“This is Ryan, Sergeant.”

After a moment’s heavy pause Newbolder said in a bored tone, “All right, boy, where are you?”

“Public phone. Don’t bother tracing it. I’ll be out of here in a minute.”

He knew it and I could tell he wasn’t going to be bothered trying. Maybe he was still remembering last year. “Are you coming in?”

“Not yet. I have something I have to do first.”

“Oh?” His voice was too soft.

“Let’s get something straight first. Don’t waste time trying to hang Penny Stipetto’s killing on me. I didn’t pull it off. I had nothing at all to do with that hit. You poke around for another angle and you’ll get some answers.”

He didn’t answer me at first, then he said quietly, “I didn’t think you did. You looked good for it though. Besides, you’d be better off in custody than having Big Step breathing down your throat.”

“He doesn’t bother me.”

“No? Well he bothers me now. He’s ready to blow the top off things.”

“Let him. What about the Sinclair girl?”

Newbolder came back too fast. “What about her?”

“She talk?”

He still spoke too fast. “What would she have to say?”

“That’s what I’m wondering.”

“Damn you, Ryan...”

“She’s in the picture, Sergeant. That mess last night wasn’t all me. Big Step had his men out there waiting for me, but she was something right out of the blue.”

“Ryan...” I knew he was signalling for a tracer now and cursing himself for not having put one on the phone before.

I said, “I’ll call you back, kiddo,” and hung up.

Now the bit was tighter than ever.

Until now Newbolder had figured that the Sinclair dame sitting with me was a pure accident and I took advantage of the diversion she stirred up outside to take off. Now he was figuring me as being part of a larger picture. In a way it was good. I could always get the fuzz for company real fast if I needed them.

Chapter 3

The day man at the Woolsey-Lever Hotel was Lennie Ames and he owed me a favor. Two years ago he had been making book right at the desk when a team from vice came in to tag him, only I spotted them first, picked up his briefcase of receipts, markers and cash and walked off with the evidence. He got them back after the heat was off and never had the nerve to get in the game again. And I hadn’t asked for the favor back until now.

When I walked into the shabby, off-Broadway hotel, Lennie Ames spotted me coming through the door and turned white. Like everybody else, he had seen the papers, only he knew what was coming up. With the barest nod of his head he motioned toward the office and I went in, shut the door and waited. Two minutes later Lennie came in quickly, eased the door closed and plunked down in his chair behind the desk. “Irish... for Pete’s sake...”

Before he could finish I said, “I’m collecting now, buddy.”

“Does it have to be me? Man, ever since those hustlers got rousted off Eighth they’ve been operating out of here. Every night some plainclothes dick comes prowling around. Yesterday there’s an investigator from the D.A.’s office in asking questions...”

“All I want is a room and no trouble.”

“You already got the trouble.”

“That’s something I have to clean up.”

He got up, walked to the window and peered out through the Venetian blinds, then closed them all the way. “Look, Ryan, the cops I can steer off, but suppose that Stipetto mob tracks you here? You think they won’t put things together? They know what you did one time. So they’ll squeeze me and I squeeze easy. I’m chicken, man. I’m ready to run right now. Big Step will put a slug in me as fast as he will you if he knows I’m hiding you out.”

“I don’t remember waiting to be asked to do a favor that last time, Lennie.”

He looked at me, his eyes mirroring his embarrassment. “Okay, Irish, so I was a heel for a while.” He grinned at me and tried to light a cigarette with hands that shook enough so that it took two matches to do it. “We keep a spare on the fourth floor northwest corner. It’s marked MAINTENANCE SUPPLIES and has an exterior fire escape exit that leads down to the courtyard in back. There’s a John, a wash basin and a cot in there and you don’t have to register. The handyman who used it died in a sanatorium three months ago and we’ve been contracting our maintenance work, such as it is. Any questions, you tell them you and he made the arrangements. Leave me out of it.”

“Good enough. What about the night manager?”

“A screaming fag afraid of his own shadow. He’s had a lot of trouble and we’re the only ones who’ll give him a job. He’ll do anything to keep it. I’ll take care of him.”

“You’ll tell him then?”

“Damn right. It’s better they know. I’ll tell him you’ll land on him like a ton of bricks if he opens his mouth.” Lennie pulled the drawer out, threw me a key and said, “It’s all yours now. Don’t do me any more favors and I won’t do you any.”

“Sure,” I said, pocketed the key and left.

It was only a little cubicle, but it was enough. I could sweat out the days there and use the phone if I had to. The door had a barrel bolt on the inside and the window went up easily. I cased the yard, spotted a handy exit through the six foot fences if I needed it, then flopped down on the cot.

Now was a time for thinking.

I had walked into one hell of a mess. Big Step thought I knocked off his brother and I had the motive, the ability and the time to do it. So he was after me.

The fuzz took the same attitude on recommendation from their varied sources of information and were scouring the city for me. I had a record of arrests even if there were no convictions and they’d love to see me take a fall. I had been in their hair too damn long.

Karen Sinclair was next. If she told me straight, and there was no reason for her not to, I was right in the middle of somebody else’s game. She claimed to be a Federal agent and nobody was saying anything. Her job with the FCC could be a great cover. She had passed me something that could make or break our national security and I boffed it.

Damn it, I felt like one hungry trout in a small pond on the opening day of the fishing season! A lousy rabbit that accidentally jumped the fence into a pen of starving hounds.

First move then: I could clean Big Step off my back and the fuzz too if I found Penny Stipetto’s killer. But that left Karen Sinclair and the ones she spotted tailing her. That left a whole damn Federal agency who would be breathing down my throat for that capsule.

And Fly had that.

So find Fly first. Go into Big Step’s back yard and find Fly. It wasn’t going to be easy. The little weasel never holed up in the same place twice and slept in as many doorways as he did beds, but he did leave himself wide open on one count... he had told Lisa he was hurting for a blast and thought the cap he took from me was heroin. If it was, there could be trouble. If it wasn’t, the trouble was even worse. I had to find out.

Dusk came a little after seven and as soon as the supper crowd had cleared the streets I went back downstairs, got a scared glance from the gay boy at the desk and went outside to the drugstore on the corner and put in a call to Bill Grady who did a syndicated column across the nation and waited for him to answer.

His secretary asked me who I was and I gave the name of the State Senator. It got action fast. She told me he was at his hotel, gave me the number to call and before she could notify him I had my dime in the slot and was dialing.

I said, “Grady?”

“Roger. Who’s this?”

“Irish.”

There was silence for a second, then: “Boy, you sure don’t fool around. Where are you?”

“Not too far away. Can we talk?”

“Come on up.”

“There’s a statute about aiding and abetting.”

“So I’ve heard. There’s also freedom of the press and the unwritten law of protecting news sources. I smell a story.”

“Ten minutes.”

“I’ll be waiting. Alone.”

Bill Grady lived in a hotel on West Seventy-Second Street, an old conservative place left over from a different era. I took the elevator up to his floor, touched the buzzer and when he opened the door, stepped inside. I hadn’t seen him for three years, but it didn’t make any difference. We were still a couple of Army buddies who had a short lifetime together and nothing had changed.

We had one drink before he nodded to a chair and said, “Sit down and talk. You’re the hottest item in town.”

I shook my head. “It only looks that way, friend.”

“Oh?”

“Are we off the record?”

“Natch. Shoot.”

So I told him. When I finished he still hadn’t touched his drink, but his face looked tight and his fingers were bloodless around the glass in his hand. I said, “What’s the matter?”

He took a sip of his highball and put the glass down. “You’ve just confirmed something that’s been a rumor if I read it right.”

“So tell me.”

Grady hesitated, debating within himself what he should let out. Finally he turned around and stared at me. “I trusted you with my life a few times. I don’t see why you’d blow the whistle on this. Have you read about the Soviet oceanography work going on since ‘46?”

“Some. They’ve been mapping the ocean floor, studying currents, tidal effects, marine life and all that jazz. Why?”

“You know how the Polaris missile works, don’t you?”

“Compressed air fired from a submerged vessel until airborne then rocket effect takes over with a guidance system to the target. Where does that come in?”

“The Reds have been working in International waters about twenty miles off our coasts for years. There’s nothing we can do about it except keep them under surveillance. Supposing they developed a Polaris-type missile and located them on a permanent pad a few miles from our shorelines. A half dozen could destroy our major seaport cities, population and military bases with one touch of a button. They could sit there undetected until they were ready to be used and then we’d have it.”

“You said they were under surveillance.”

“Irish buddy, the ocean is a big place. Submarine development and underwater exploration has come a long way. They could have had decoys going while the real thing sneaked up past our screen and while we’re tangled in nuclear disarmament talks and peace treaties, playing big brother to all the slobs in the world, the Soviets are laying the groundwork for our own destruction if the surface negotiations don’t go their way. Like idiots, our military appropriations don’t allow for full protection. The jerks who handle the loot fight a war in Viet Nam with WWII aircraft, let our guys get killed, they yank out MacArthur who could have won the Korean thing, they make us look stupid around the globe and dig their own graves while they all try to soak up newspaper space so they can run for office when they get promoted up and out.”

“Get to the point.”

Bill Grady nodded and made himself another drink. He swirled the ice around in the glass and took a swallow from it. “From unauthorized sources, I hear Karen Sinclair was a Fed, all right. I checked her b.g. and she was an Oceanography major at a west coast university. She started out on an assignment with six others, all of whom have died under peculiar circumstances. A further check puts her with a relatively unimportant Navy department engaged in subsurface research, ostensibly charting the shelf off our coast. Let’s suppose her job was a secret one, to locate these possible underwater missile sites. Let’s suppose she did. You think the Soviets wouldn’t be aware of their presence and try to stop it? But let’s suppose she alone got away with a record of their positions somehow. They couldn’t afford to let her live. She couldn’t be left to make her contact. They would have put every resource at their command to nail her and it looks like they might have... and you, my friend, were entrusted with the goodies.”

I got up, my lips tight across my mouth. “Why me?”

“Because she had to do something and you look like you do.”

“Nuts!” I slammed the drink down and glared at him. “That’s too damn many suppositions. I don’t like any of them.”

Quietly, he said, “Suppose they’re true?”

“Why the hell do I have to get trapped in the middle?”

“Kismet, my friend. Maybe you’re lucky.” He took a pull of the drink again. “Or maybe all of us are.” Then he looked at me and waited.

“All right, Grady, cut it fine. If I go to the cops they slap my can in a cell for homicide. I sweat. If I tap the Feds they turn me over to the cops anyway. If I give them the story they won’t believe me because I can’t come up with a lousy capsule and Karen Sinclair isn’t able to talk. If she dies, I’ll be dead too. If I prowl the streets, either Big Step hits me or the cops do, so where does that leave me?”

For the first time Bill Grady let out a sardonic laugh. “I don’t know, old buddy, but it’s going to be mighty interesting. Even your obituary written from a speculative viewpoint ought to buy new readers.”

“Great. Thanks a bunch.”

“No trouble.”

“And where do you go from here?”

His grin got bigger. “Nowhere. I’m going to sit back and watch. I want to see a big war hero who digs the hood bit turn patriotic, not because he wants to, but because he has to. It will be an interesting study in human behavior. You’ve always been an enigma to everybody, now here’s your chance to be an even bigger one. All I want is the story.”

“Go screw yourself.”

“Physically impossible,” he laughed again. “It’s you who’s screwed. To make it worse I went and upset your weird idea of morality and now I want to see the action. You got no choice any longer, Irish. You’re the only one who knows all the facts you have to get out of the trap. If you do and when you do, I’ll rate a scoop bonus. How about that?”

I put my glass down and stood up. “Maybe, Bill, maybe.”

“What’s with the maybe?”

“I might need a liaison man. If you want the story, then you’re tagged.”

He licked his lips, slammed one hand into the other and said, “I might have figured it. So what do you want?”

“Get me in to see Karen Sinclair.”

“It can’t be done. You’ll be spotted. She’s got a uniformed police guard and a dozen of the pretty boys stationed around her room. It’s impossible.”

“So do it anyway,” I told him.

At ten p.m. a makeup man from NBC dropped a curly headed rug over my short hair, fitted me with a London mustache, clear-lensed glasses and with a Graflex in my hand, I passed for a Manchester newspaperman whose press card had been lifted from a passed-out owner an hour before. We both had to put down a gallon of ginger ale before he went out on double scotches, but it worked and we made the front desk where a police spokesman told us Karen Sinclair was still too critical to be interviewed. A group of other reporters gave us the laugh for making the try and went back to playing cards on an upside down tray set on their knees.

But Grady didn’t stop there. He got the plainclothes man down in the lobby. “Look, maybe she can’t talk, but all we want to do is make sure.”

The cop said, “Sorry, she isn’t to be seen.”

“Maybe there’s more here than we know about. Since when do innocent bystanders in a shooting get this kind of treatment? I think a little legwork might come up with a tasty bit.”

The young guy in the blue gabardine frowned. “Listen...”

“I don’t listen to anybody. I write, mister. I do a column and have carte blanche and if you want it that way, I can raise a lot of interesting questions.”

“Wait here a minute,” the guy said. He walked to a phone, dialed a number and spoke for a good two minutes. When he came back he nodded for us to follow him. “You can take a look... that’s all. She’s out cold and there’s nothing more to it than that. She has a police guard because of this Stipetto business and she might have been a possible eye witness to what happened.”

I picked it up quicker than Grady did. “What do you mean... what happened?”

The guy was trapped. All he could do was say, “Sorry but...”

Before he could turn away I grabbed his arm. “You mean there was more than the shooting?”

When he turned around he was composed again, his face inscrutable. “If you’re a police reporter you know what I mean about eye witnesses. Now if you want to see the dame, you have one minute to take a look.”

“Sure, but you know us,” I said. “Always questions.”

“Yeah, but keep it quiet. You’ll be the first ones allowed in for a look, and no pictures,” he added, pointing to my camera.

I acknowledged and slapped the Graflex shut. The elevator took us to the sixth floor where our guide led us past the others stationed at strategic points along the corridor. The doctor met us at the door, told us to be quick and make no noise, then turned the knob, spoke to the nurse inside and let us pass.

Somebody had taken off Karen Sinclair’s makeup and for the first time, I saw her as she was. Even lying there, her face waxen pale, she was a stunning woman, the sheets adhering to every contour of that magnificent body, the lustrous gleam of her chestnut hair framing her beauty. One shoulder was swathed in bandages and another bandage was outlined at her waist.

The nurse beside us reached for her pulse automatically, seemed satisfied and laid her arm back down.

“How badly was she shot?” I asked her.

“Luckily, clean wounds. The bullets missed vital organs.”

“Is she out of danger?”

“That is for the doctor to say. Now if you don’t mind...” She walked to the door and held it open. Grady followed her, but I hesitated just a moment. There was a barely perceptible flicker of her eyelids, then they opened slightly and she was looking at me.

I had to do it quickly. I had to make myself known and hope she could think fast despite her condition. I knew I was unrecognizable by my face, but I could duplicate a situation. Without moving my lips, I said softly, “What was the powder in the capsule? Was it heroin?”

For a half second there was no response, then she got it. In the same way, with no motion, her voice a whisper, she said, “Powdered sugar.” Then her eyes closed again and I walked away.

Our impatient guide who waited for us in the corridor said, “Satisfied?”

Bill nodded and shrugged. “Sorry to bother you. It’s nice to be sure.”

“The press will be officially notified of any changes. We’d appreciate it if you would not speculate and stay with the communiqués.”

“Sure.” Bill looked at me. “Let’s go. Thanks for the tour.”

The guy bobbed his head. “Don’t mention it... to the other reporters, I mean.”

When we were on the steps outside the hospital, I steered Grady to one side and held a match up to the cigarette in his mouth. “They have something hot on this one. Did you get what he said in the beginning?”

“About what happened?”

“Yeah.”

“Let’s make a phone call. I have a solid in at headquarters. They’ll feed me any action if I promise not to let it out until it’s cleared.”

We crossed the street to a drug store and I waited while Bill put in his call. When he came out of the booth his face was serious, his eyes dark with concern. He sucked nervously on the cigarette and let the smoke stream through his nostrils. “Well?”

“You could have been the key, Irish,” he told me. “She was an agent, all right.”

“That wasn’t what you had on your mind.”

He dropped the butt and ground it out under his heel. “The police recovered the spent slugs and matched them with the guns. The shots that hit her didn’t come from the police or Stipetto guns. Bullets from those guns got Vincent Stipetto and Moe Green too.” He looked at me hard. “Can you break it down now?”

“I think so,” I said, “the Stipetto mob was laying for me. When she came out the others starting banging away and the Stipetto boys were caught in between and thought it was part of a crash out on my part. They never lived long enough to find out different. Then Newbolder and Schmidt made the scene and nailed the rest of the gang. In the meantime, the others saw Karen go down and since they thought they nailed their target, they cut out. All the cops saw was the Stipetto boys, tied them in with me and didn’t look any further.”

“Until now,” he mused.

“And where do they go from here?”

“No place until the Sinclair woman can talk. She’s the crux. She brought the thing to a head. Trouble is, none of it’s over. She’s still alive and you’re still free.”

“And you got my obituary already written.”

“No,” Bill said, “but I’m thinking of it.”

Chapter 4

Through Pete-the-Dog I passed the word down the street to start scratching for Fly. He was hooked on H and someplace he had to locate a source of supply so he’d be hitting a dealer. If he tried mainlining with the sugar in the capsule he’d find out in a hurry he had nothing going for him and would do a crazy dance to get a charge. He wouldn’t even try to be careful and the word would go out like a brush fire. What I had to hope for was that he wouldn’t discard the microfilm in the capsule where I couldn’t find it. A junkie with a big hurt is liable to do anything. If I was lucky he’d keep the cap for a reserve and stick with his regular pusher. He had been in the business long enough to have solid contacts but let trouble touch a hophead and everybody steered clear. Right now little old Fly could have trouble if I knew Big Step. For letting me bust loose he could be getting the hard squeeze.

Chuck Vinson’s saloon had a side entrance and I didn’t have to go through the bar to snag a booth in the back room. I took the furthest one back and pushed the button for the waiter. Old Happy Jenkins came shuffling back, napkin over one arm and a bowl of pretzels in his hand. He had to peer at me over his glasses a second before he saw who it was, then he swallowed hard and looked back toward the front with eyes suddenly scared.

“You bugs, Irish? You outa your mind? What the hell you doon in here?”

“Trying to get a beer,” I said.

“A half hour ago Big Step himself come in asking. Chuck said he ain’t seen you but it don’t mean they ain’t covering from outside.”

“So I’m all shook up over it. Do I get that beer?”

“Irish... come on. Step had that new guy with him — the one from Miami. They’re looking, man. They want you bad.”

“Doesn’t everybody?”

He licked his lips again and edged in closer. “The cops got a tail on Step in case he finds you. You know that too?”

“It figures. Now get me a tall Piel’s with a foamy head like you see on TV and I’ll blow. And ask Chuck if I got any phone calls.”

Happy nodded joylessly and shuffled off. Two minutes later he was back with a Stein, slid it over in front of me and said, “You got a call from somebody.” He handed me a matchbook cover with a number scrawled on it. “You gotta buzz ’em back. Chuck says not to use his place like an office while the heat’s on.”

When he left I finished half the beer, found a dime and hopped into the phone booth beside me. The number was a Trafalgar exchange which put it somewhere in the West Seventies but I didn’t recognize it. The phone rang just once before it was picked up and a cautious voice said, “Yeah?”

“Irish. You call?”

“Where you at?”

“Chuck Vinson’s.”

That seemed to satisfy him. He said, “Pete-the-Dog saw me today. Said you wanted to know about Fly.”

“Got anything?”

“No, but I know where he gets his junk from. He was peddling for Ernie. Ernie paid him off in H. If you want Fly, try him.”

“Thanks buddy. What do I owe you?”

“Nothin’. You took me out of a jam once. We’re square now.” He hung up abruptly and I stood there for a minute trying to figure out who it was. Hell, a lot of people owed me favors. I went back, finished my beer and went out the same way I came in, mixing with a group going past the door to the subway station.

Ernie South had started off in the wholesale candy business fifteen years ago, working the fringe areas of Harlem before he switched to dope. He had peddled the stuff for Treetop Coulter before he took his first fall, did his time in Sing Sing, then came back and muscled Treetop right out of the business. He wound up operating in Big Primo Stipetto’s territory, managed to get himself in the good graces of the boss and ran a neat operation the cops weren’t able to break.

Everybody had been hearing a lot about Ernie South lately. He and Penny Stipetto were thick as blood brothers, especially since ’62 when Big Step turned over a prime section uptown to his kid brother to run as he saw fit. Penny Stipetto had been on the verge of being a big time operator when he was knocked off and since they thought I was his killer, Ernie South would have his hands out looking for me too. Penny’s death left the section wide open and until Big Step moved back in or designated another lieutenant to handle it, Ernie was moving things around.

Damn it! I should have kept my hands to myself, but when Penny tore into old Rudy Max and broke him up for not paying protection money to operate a news stand I couldn’t help myself. I broke his jaw and four ribs and left him in a mess of his own blood on the side walk, not giving a damn how big he or his brothers were. Two of his men were right there when it happened and neither of them had the guts to go for a rod because they knew I had a blaster in my belt and would chop them down the second they moved. They had seen it happen before. No, they could wait. Big brother Step would take care of it if Penny didn’t. Only Penny Stipetto didn’t want to look like a lily with everybody waiting to see how he took it. No, he had to go gunning for me himself.

And somebody else nailed him.

Why?

It didn’t take too much doing to locate Ernie South. I had enough friends in the area who didn’t dig the narcotics bit and had seen too much heat brought in on their own operations because of his. They were glad to pinpoint him at a sleezy gin mill that featured a belly dancer, and let me work out my own arrangements with him. They knew damn well there was a price on my head from all directions, but they had lived under the shakedown racket Big Step ran too long to help him out any. All I got was a word to watch myself, a couple offers of an assist I waved off and a silent word that meant they hoped I could make something stick.

For an hour and a half I stood across the street waiting, watching the customers come and go until the place was almost empty. Then, through the window, I saw Ernie flip a bill to the bartender, say something they both thought was funny, then go to the door.

He was looking west watching for a cab when I put the nose of the .45 in his ribs and said, “Hello, Ernie.”

Even before he turned around he started to shake like he was going to come apart at the seams. He stiffened, seemed to rise on his toes and twisted just enough to see me. Then his eyes met mine briefly and a smile flickered across his mouth and he relaxed until he was almost casual. “You’re taking big chances these days, Irish.”

“Not from you, punk.” I nudged him with the gun, ran my hand over his pockets and beltline to make sure he wasn’t heeled and said, “Start walking. Get out of line just once and you’ve had it, boy.” I wasn’t putting on an act. I’d scatter his guts over the street as fast as I’d look at him and he knew it, but he knew it didn’t have to happen either so he simply shrugged and turned toward Broadway and strolled along with me at his side like a couple of buddies.

“You’re in the wrong end of town, Irish. Big Step has his people all over the place.”

“Then hope we don’t meet any. You’ll catch the first one.”

I saw his nervous glance to both sides of the street, hoping nobody would show. Hopheads Ernie could handle. Me he couldn’t. “What’s the gimmick?” he asked. “We never tangled. I’m not any part of the show.”

“I want Fly. He peddled around for you and you supplied his H. Where is he?”

“How the hell should I know?”

“The last time I saw him he needed to blast bad. You’re his source.”

Ernie South didn’t answer me. He reached for a cigarette and lit it with a hand that shook badly.

I said, “Ernie, I’m going to point this rod at your leg. I’m going to put one right through the back of your knee and roll out of here before a squad car can get near the place. You’ll be going around on an aluminum and plastic peg the rest of your life.”

He tried to sound calm about it. “You wouldn’t do it.”

“Remember Junior Swan? Ever see his hands? He can’t use either of them now. Remember Buck Harris and Sy Green? Sy’s mind is going on him now and Buck is still in a wheelchair in a charity ward trying to forget that night.”

Ernie remembered all right. I could see the sweat on his forehead glistening under his hatbrim. He swallowed, wiped his hand across his face and half whispered, “So Fly’s on the out list. He don’t get a thing from nobody.”

“Why?”

“Because Big Step said so. He’s making Fly hurt for doing a dumb thing like he did with you.”

“Where is he, Ernie?”

“I don’t know! I...”

He heard the .45 go off half cock and the tiny click was like a sonic boom in his ears. “Come on, Irish, I don’t know where he is. Try somebody else!”

“Name them.”

“Cortez maybe. Connie Morse or Joey Gomp on Ninety-Sixth Street. He used to hit them sometimes.”

“That’s still Big Step’s territory.”

“Sure, and they’re all cuttin’ him off. So try downtown. He had some contacts there only don’t ask who. My turf is here. I don’t know them guys.”

I knew he was telling the truth. Ernie South wasn’t about to lie to me right then or he knew what would happen. “Where’s his pad, Ernie?”

“Basement joint two places down from Steve’s Diner on Second.”

I caught the expression that came into his face and let him feel a touch of the gun again. “Finish it, Ernie.”

He was caught and knew it. If he didn’t lay it on the line he knew I’d come looking for him. He said, “Big Step’s got a man covering the place.”

“Why?”

“So Fly can’t make his pad if he’s got anything stashed away in there.”

“Nice. Step holds a big mad, doesn’t he?”

“You’ll find out,” he said viciously.

“Who killed Penny Stipetto, Ernie?”

He stopped then, turned his head to look directly at me and his eyes were black with hate. His whole face seemed drawn in a tight mask. I grinned at him deliberately and shook my head. “Not me, boy.”

“You’re dead, Ryan. You might just as well jump in front of a subway and get it over with.”

I thumbed the .45 back on half cock again and shoved it under my belt. “When I go it’ll be the hard way and it won’t be alone. Go tell Big Step I’m looking for him.”

He almost ran getting to the corner and when he was out of sight I cut across the street, through an alley and came out the other side, flagged down a cab and told him to take me to the Cafeteria. Big Step, Newbolder, Schmidt and the rest might be looking for me but they wouldn’t be expecting me to turn up in a place I ate in five nights a week. Enough of the Broadway crowd would be on hand as usual to pass me any information if they weren’t too scared of the action.

Wally Pee was the first one to spot me and he almost spilled his coffee. He gave me the signal that he was no good for talking and let his eyes sidle to the back corner where Izzy Goldwitz was finishing a pot pie with his usual relish. I walked up, got a cup of coffee and took it back to Izzy’s table where I sat down with my back to the rest. It could be a fatal mistake, but I didn’t want anybody picking me up by sight. Izzy got that sick look again and couldn’t finish his pot pie, reaching for his coffee to quiet down what was happening to his stomach.

When he put the cup down his eyes pleaded with me. “Get lost, Irish. Get away from me, huh? You got this town on its ear already and I don’t want to be there when the shooting starts again.”

“No sweat, Izzy. All I want is Fly. You see him around?”

“Me, I don’t see nothing. Now scram, okay?”

“Fly’s shitting all the suppliers.”

“I know. Big Step’s got him cut off. Fly’s taking a cure whether he likes it or not and it’ll kill him for letting you off the hook. So whatta you want him for? Another guy was looking for him before. Got Pedro the bus boy all shook?”

I frowned at him. “Who?”

“I dunno. Ask Pedro. Just get away from me.”

“Sure, Izzy. Thanks.”

“From you I want nothin’, not even thanks.”

Pedro was a little Puerto Rican with a multiplicity of last names nobody could pronounce who worked his heart out hustling dirty dishes to support six brothers and sisters. He was quick as a banty rooster and always ready with a big smile, but when I found him in the back room off the kitchen he was neither quick nor smiling. He was sitting on an upturned lard bucket, his head in his hands and when I came in he jumped, his face contorted, his hands clutching his belly.

I said, “Hi, Pete.”

When he recognized me he tied on a smile but it didn’t fit very well and he dropped it. “Mr. Ryan,” he acknowledged softly.

“What happened, kid?”

“I theenk nothing happened, please.”

With my toe I hooked an empty coke box and set it up so I could squat down beside him. “Let’s have it Pete. Who took you apart?”

“It ees nothing.”

“Don’t kid me. I’ll find out anyway, so save yourself some grief. Whoever did it can come back.”

Sudden terror filled his eyes and he huddled up against the wall, his teeth biting into his lip. He looked at me, shrugged resignedly. “A man, he look for Fly. He look for you too.”

“Who came first?”

“You, Mr. Ryan. He ask about you the other night. I theenk he is police and I tell heem how you left here. I tell heem how Fly was back there waiting too.”

“What else?”

“Nothing. I can’t tell heem where you are. I tell heem where Fly lives after he hit me.”

“Describe him.”

“Not beeg as you, Mr. Ryan. Funny voice like I have to speak English, only different. Very bad man. Mad.”

“So you know where Fly is?”

He shook his head. “No. I do not see him seence then.”

“He was your friend, Pete. You know he was hooked on H?”

“Sure, I know.”

“Do you know where he gets his stuff?”

“Before, from Ernie South mostly. Now, I do not know.”

“Anybody around here?”

“Nobody will sell to Fly now. He ees in a very bad way, I theenk.”

I stood up and rubbed the top of his head. “Okay, kid, thanks. Don’t you worry about the guy coming back. Until it’s over you’ll get a little cover.”

“Please, you don’t have to...”

“No sweat, Pete. No trouble at all.” I grinned at him and this time he managed a small smile for real. I said, “There a phone around here?”

He pointed toward the door. “Right inside the kitchen.”

I reached Newbolder at his home after the precinct gave me his number. He said, “Sergeant Newbolder speaking, who is this?”

“Your buddy, Irish.”

He didn’t say anything for a few seconds and I could hear him breathing, then flick on a cigarette lighter.

“Okay, I can’t put a tracer on your call from here, Irish. Now what’s the pitch?”

“There’s a kid at the Cafeteria, a bus boy named Pedro. Maybe you’d better keep him covered for a few days. He just took a shellacking from an unknown person that might fit into your case.”

I could hear a pencil scratching, then: “You got friends of your own who could do that, Ryan.”

“Yeah, I know, but that’s what you’re for.”

“Don’t get snotty,” he said. “You’re after something.”

“A hophead named Fly.”

“What about him?”

“Has he been seen around?”

“No squawks on him.”

“Then you’d better run him down quick before you have a corpse on your hands. Big Step cut off his supply and if he doesn’t fold he’ll knock off somebody to get a charge.”

“Where does he fit in?”

“I’d like to tell you, copper, but if I want out of this mess I have to get out myself.”

“You’re not doing too well. If you make another day on the streets your luck is running first class.”

“I’ll play along with it.”

“When you get smart, pass it up. Right now that Federal agency you shilled for a couple years ago is breathing down your neck. You’re on everybody’s ‘S’ list and it’s only a matter of time. Until Big Step moves we can’t lay a hand on him and by then it’ll be too late, you’ll be dead, so I recommend protective custody.”

“And a murder charge for bumping Penny Step? No dice, Sarge.”

Casually, he said, “Have it your way, friend.”

“I will.” Then I added, “By the way, how is Karen Sinclair?”

And just as off handedly he said, “I couldn’t tell you. An hour ago she was kidnapped from her room.”

It was like I had been sapped again. “What?”

“Blame yourself a little, Irish. Try this one on your conscience if you have any.”

My fingers squeezed the phone so hard my knuckles turned white. “How was it worked?”

“Two doctors under a gun. The third guy posed as an intern. He shot the guy he took the uniform from in front of the doctors and they had no choice except to go along. They moved her into an ambulance under the guard’s noses and got her out. We found the ambulance ten minutes ago, but she could be anywhere by now.”

“Damn!”

“So chalk one dead girl up on your list, hood. I think you got the picture pretty well by now. We took Bill Grady in and he had to lay it out for us. You’ve made everybody a lot of trouble and when you dream, think of that lovely broad stretched out on a slab somewhere.”

Under my breath I began swearing, then stopped when I was so tight I wanted to tear the damn phone right off the wall. “They won’t kill her,” I said.

“No? Why?”

“Because I have what they want and it won’t do them a bit of good to bump her unless they know where she dropped the little goodie they’re all after.”

I hung up then, stared at the phone a minute, then crossed the kitchen and took the back way out through the service entrance. Fly was the key. Someplace he was roaming around carrying a bombshell of information big enough to tear apart the world. They knew it and I knew it, but I couldn’t get to it without making myself a target for the cops, Big Step and a team of Soviet killers.

The hell I couldn’t.

I was looking for a cab when the black Chevy came idling by. The light on the corner was green and in New York you don’t loaf when you have the signal on your side. It was too out of character for a cab with N.Y. plates and I had played too many games the same way not to notice it.

Even before the first shot flamed from the window I was down and rolling, scrambling sideways for the cover of the trash cans at the curb and right behind me two more rocketed off the sidewalk with a brief, shrill ricochetting scream before they plastered against the wall. I had just a single look at the face turned my way that was framed in the light of the street lamp, a sharp, hawklike face under a shock of pitch black hair with one unruly twist of it hanging down into his eyes.

The car was gone around the corner before I could get the gun out and except for a drunk who looked at me soddenly, nobody caught the action. They heard the noise though, even if most of it was contained inside the Chevy. Two couples were dodging traffic to get across the street, but before they made it or I had to offer any explanations, I got up, dusted myself off and started away.

The drunk wiped the drool from his mouth and laughed. “Nice friends you got, mister.”

“Only the best,” I told him.

So now I was being stalked. Somebody figured I might come back looking for Fly, or word would get to me about somebody looking for him. I was being set up very nicely by a pack of pros and the perimeter of the jungle was getting smaller and smaller. Well, I lived here too and I wasn’t going to make it easier for them.

But I wasn’t really thinking of myself. I was thinking of the loveliness of Karen Sinclair, the broad who was willing to give her life for a purpose. Now they had her... and I knew why. To break her out meant a trade... the microfilm for her, and even then it was a rotten deal because once they had their information back, she would go under a gun too. And what they wanted was in the possession of a crazy junkie who wouldn’t know the time of day when I found him. If I found him.

Chapter 5

A couple of years ago a Fed team had me picked up. It wasn’t a pinch, though I would have been better off if it were. It was a cute pressure play because they wanted my peculiar services at their command since it was the only way they could handle a project. They laid my neck on the line and I had no choice about it so I played cop with them and came out of the deal a hood-type patriot and it took a long time to wash the smell of the association out of my system. My kind of people didn’t go along with any kind of cops, even a recruited hood.

Now the time for returning favors was back again. The card in my wallet was worn at the edges and a few odds and ends were scribbled across the face, but the number was still legible and I called it. Somebody was always at that office night and day and I wasn’t worried about getting an answer at this hour. The phone was lifted and a voice said, “Varlie Imports, what can I do for you?”

“Try remembering me for a starter,” I said.

“Yes?” The voice was puzzled.

“The name is Ryan... the Irish one as you used to call me.”

“One moment, please.” Sound diminished as he held a hand over mouthpiece and I could barely hear the hum of voices. Then the hand was taken away and the voice that spoke to me was a different one, but one I remembered well.

There was nothing friendly there. It was cold and impersonal and said, “What do you want, Ryan?”

“To see you, Shaffer. You’re picking up a tab for me.”

“Ryan...”

“Uh-uh. I’ll do the talking. I’m in a pay station and you can’t trace the call in time so don’t bother. Just go to the corner of Eighth Avenue and Forty-Fifth Street and start walking north on the west side. When I’m sure you’re alone I’ll contact you. Twenty minutes, that’s all you have.” I hung up and grinned to myself. Cliff Shaffer would be there, all right. He knew what the picture was well enough.

I knew he’d make a try for a pinch anyway so I had a friend of mine who had an independent cab out in front of the car he had stationed near the corner and block its way. Before Shaffer went fifty feet I was behind him, steered him into the hotel lobby on the corner and angled to the east-west street and started him walking. I didn’t have to use the gun. Shaffer never did trust me all the way and wasn’t taking any chances. When he knew I had caught the play in time, he shrugged it off and played the game. He hadn’t bothered wearing a rod either.

Two blocks over was an all night diner and we had coffee and sandwiches sent back to our table and I looked at him sitting there, still the same, case hardened cop he had always been, a little grayer now with a few more wrinkles at the corners of his eyes, but a guy who headed up a tight little agency assigned to special high-priority projects only.

He looked at me just as carefully and said, “You haven’t changed much, Irish.”

“I’m still alive.”

“For how long? There’s a city wide alert on you. Or maybe Big Step will reach you first.”

“You left out some tourist types, old buddy.”

The hand bringing the match to his cigarette stopped in midair. “You know too much, Ryan.”

“No... not quite enough. I want to stay alive and you, friend, are going to help out.”

“Like hell. What you did before doesn’t carry any weight now. You’re just another hood to me and if I can nail you for the city boys it’ll be my pleasure.” He glared at me and finished lighting his butt.

“Let’s put Karen Sinclair in this,” I said. “Let’s not make me out an idiot. I didn’t get asked in, I was forced in by one of your people again and I’m tired of being a pawn.”

Softly, he said, “Where do you get your information from, Irish?”

“I was a college boy once, remember? I was a war hero. I’m clever.”

“You’re a damned hood.”

“So I like it this way. I can chisel the chiselers and don’t have to pay any respect to the phony politicos who run us into the ground for their own egotistical satisfaction. I don’t have to go along with the sheep who cry and bleat about the way things are and can do something about it in my own way. If this was 1776 I’d be a revolutionary and tax collectors would be fair game. I could drop the enemies trying to destroy us and be a wheel. So screw it, I’m not going to be a sheep.”

His icy gray eyes ran over my face and his smile was almost deadly. “Let’s talk about Karen Sinclair.”

“And oceanography?” I needled him. “Or would a strip of microfilm be better, one that locates all the underwater missile pads the Soviets laid off our coastline?”

With feigned calmness Shaffer folded his hands together and leaned forward on the table. “I didn’t think it was possible. I didn’t think coincidence could be so damn acute. We all wondered and tried to put it together and nothing would fit.”

“The ones who tailed her put it together fast enough.”

He ignored me completely, following his own train of thought. “So you’re the one she passed it on to. She was able to say that much but couldn’t make a positive identification. We knew but we weren’t sure. We didn’t think it could have happened like that.”

“Who are they, Shaffer?”

“Where is it, Irish?”

“Who are they?” I repeated.

Shaffer let his smile stretch across his mouth, tight and nasty. “Manos Dekker. He’s the head of the thing we labeled the Freddie Project in Argentina, the one who killed Carlos Amega in Madrid and behind the sabotage in our installations in Viet Nam.”

“Now he’s here,” I stated.

“I’m going to tell you a story, Irish.”

“Go ahead.”

“They spotted our people supposedly engaged in simple coastwise oceanography. They used a limpet and blew the Fairway II apart, but they didn’t get the motor launch in time. Karen Sinclair and Tim Reese got away with the charts they had made and Tim microfilmed them in Miami. They got him there too, but by then Karen had the film strips but couldn’t deliver because they were right behind her. Somehow she made New York. It didn’t do her much good because they have their agents all over and covered all routes and were waiting for her to show up. Luckily, she spotted them and took the big chance. Unluckily, it had to be you. Now where is it?”

“Get me off the hook and maybe you’ll find out.”

Gently, he unlaced his fingers and shook out another cigarette. “What?”

“I know where it is. I might be able to recover it. I can’t do it with the cops on my neck. I can’t fight a murder charge and the Stipettos at the same time.”

“Sorry, Irish.”

“In that case, so am I. You’ll lose an agent and all she worked for.”

“Damn it, Irish...”

“Just do it,” I said, “I don’t care how. You guys have the power so make things move. You did it once before when I didn’t want it, so do it now when I do or I’ll resurrect that deal all over again and blow it wide open in the papers.”

“Patriotism, Irish.”

“Don’t bother naming it. I’m saving my own neck.”

“How about Karen Sinclair’s? You seem to have a soft tone when you say her name.”

Soft? I couldn’t get her out of my mind. Ever since I saw her that’s all I could think about.

“Knock it off, Shaffer. Are you coming through?”

“This time I don’t have the choice, do I?”

“No.”

“I’m wondering about something else too,” he said. “You’d like to process this so you come out clean, wouldn’t you?”

I watched him and waited.

Shaffer smiled at me and I couldn’t read his face at all. “I’m going to run your gun permit through for you. You’re being reactivated, Ryan.”

“The hell I am!”

“Then you didn’t read the fine print in those papers you signed a couple years ago. The provision was there. The penalties too.”

“You bastard. I’m not playing cop again.”

“Like you say, Irish boy, ‘The hell you ain’t.’ You know where to reach me. Call in. I’ll get some of the heat off your back. You take care of the rest.” He got up slowly, his mouth twisting in a wry smile. “Maybe it was a good thing she did pick you out of eight million people. You’re just smart enough, mean enough and evil enough to do what has to be done.”

“Listen, Shaffer...”

But he wouldn’t. He shook his head, holding up his hand to cut me off. “We’ll have our men out too. We’ll scour the city for Karen Sinclair, but we know what we’re up against. This isn’t a ransom snatch. It was cleverly planned and executed. The ones behind it have a motivation greater than ransom with more resources at their command than the criminal element. But in their own peculiar ways they are criminals and like the old saying goes, it takes one to catch one. Good hunting, Irish. If we can supply any leads just call. You have the number. I suggest you come down and look at our mug shots.”

He turned and walked out and I cursed him silently every inch of the way to the door. The slob hung me again with my own kind and there was no turning back. Even getting the heat off wasn’t worth it. I liked what I was and wanted to keep it that way and now I was back on the other end of the stick again.

Damn.

Shaffer had clued his office staff. They were all the clean cut type and two of them watched me go over the mug books with narrowed eyes of disapproval. On one’s desk was my dossier so I knew they had all the data from the last deal. The broad at the reception desk was the only one who seemed impressed because she took a pose with her legs so I could see the flash of white thigh above her nylons under the desk and when she brought another set of photos over she bent down deliberately to give me the benefit of an unrestricted view of ample breasts that wanted to spill out of her dress. One of the guys tightened his mouth impatiently and threw three eight by ten glossies in front of my nose and waved her out of there. “Manos Dekker,” he said.

They weren’t studio shots. They were taken with a long range lens and blown up, but the face and all its characteristics were there. Dekker had no stamp of nationality on him, but the set to his eyes, the flaccid mouth and the slight hump in his nose marked him a killer and a man who enjoyed his work. I had seen too many with those almost imperceptible peculiarities not to recognize the breed.

I fastened him in my mind and went back to the selected photos of other agents operating in this country. Two I knew right off, but so did everybody else. In one hazy shot that was evidently an enlargement of individuals originally in a group shot, I thought I had seen another before but couldn’t quite place him. The guy at my shoulder caught my hesitation and said, “Taken at a Commie meeting on the Island. Not identified.”

I nodded, looked through the book and closed it. “Thanks for the trouble.”

“No trouble at all,” I told him.

“Any contact with those persons will be reported.”

“Sure. Dead or alive?”

“Don’t be funny.”

Lisa Williams left very little trail. She was always on call for anything Big Step needed and if he wanted to farm her out to his boys for kicks she had to go along. Ever since he destroyed her with his fists she had lived a life of fear, indelibly tied to the punk because his mark was on her and nobody else would touch her. She hustled the upper Broadway Johns for side money and spent it in the gin mills, a sucker for a touch from every stray cat type with a hard luck story.

Getting to her without making contacts with any of the Stipetto mob or their stringers who would be happy to pass on the news I was in the territory wasn’t easy, but like I said before, it was my city too and there weren’t many back alleys or dodges I didn’t know. I had to live by them the same way they did only on a bigger scale and it took a hell of a lot more doing.

I found her in the back room of a shabby brownstone at four in the morning, a lonely voice fogged out of shape by too much booze, caroling a song from a stage hit she had been in years ago. When I knocked on the door it was as if someone had lifted the arm on a record player. The quiet was almost intense, and I knew that inside she was standing there rigid, listening hard, her heart pounding with that old fear again.

At last she said, “Yes... yes, who is it?”

“Irish, honey, open up.”

Very slowly, the door opened on a chain and she peered out at me, eyes reddened from a big bar night, her hair dishevelled, an untidy lock of it falling across her face. “Ryan?” she said tentatively. And when she made sure it was me she bit into a knuckle and shook her head mutely.

“Let me in, girl.”

“No... please. If anybody sees you...”

“Nobody saw me but they might if I stand here long enough.” That decided her. She closed the door, took off the chain and held it open reluctantly. I squeezed inside, shut and locked it, then walked across the room and sat on the arm of the mohair chair by the shaded window.

“Why... did you come here?”

“I’m looking for Fly. You know where he is?”

She opened her mouth to lie then knew I caught it and let her head fall into her hands. “Why doesn’t Big Step let him alone?” she sobbed jerkily.

“What did he do to you, baby?”

Lisa let her hands fall and hang straight at her sides. “All he could do was hit me. I... I didn’t care. It was that new one from Miami they call Pigeon who did things.” The tears welled up and an expression of shame clouded her face. Without looking at me she sank into a straightback chair and stared at the floor. “That one isn’t normal. He... he’s perverted. He made me...”

“You don’t have to tell me about it.”

“I never did anything like that before, even when they tried to... hold me down. He took this...”

“Can it, Lisa.”

She looked up, her eyes gone dull. “They hurt me. Step laughed and laughed. He thinks I let you go... because of those times years ago.” Like a slow motion picture she moved her hand and ran her fingers through her hair. A smiled played at the corners of her mouth and she said, “I’m going to kill him some day. Some day. Yes, it will be very nice.” There was a sing-song lilt in her voice and only then did I realize how really crocked she was. Constant practice with the bottle and an uncommonly strong constitution provided her with the ability to maintain a semblance of sobriety even when she was almost ready to go off the deep end. Her fear had covered it in the beginning, but now it showed through.

I said, “Where’s Fly, Lisa,” as gently as I could.

Little by little her eyes came back to mine. “Fly is nice. He always told me when... Step wanted me... and I would go away. When I was sick... he sent a doctor. Yes, yes. He stayed with me a week then.”

“And how did you pay him off, Lisa?”

Her smile was unconcerned. “It... didn’t matter.”

“Fly’s no better than the rest, kid. Where is he?”

“Are you... going to hurt him?”

“No.” I leaned forward to center her attention. “He took something from me. I want it back.”

She frowned, trying to think, then grimaced and said, “You... you hooked, Irish? You can get the... junk anytime.”

“I’m not hooked, kid. I want that capsule Fly took. Where did he put it?”

“He needs it.” There was a defiance in her face I knew I couldn’t break.

So I said, “It’s only sugar, Lisa. He won’t get anything from it but trouble.”

It wasn’t Fly she cared for. It was the little guy, the creature, the beat-down thing that made him so much like she was herself. It was the two-of-a-kind feeling, people in the same foxhole, wounded and hurting with terrifying death at any moment.

“Is... it true?”

I nodded.

Without seeming to cry, the tears began an erratic course down her cheeks. “He put it... somewhere. For later, he said. Now he can’t go to his place...”

“I know, Big Step has one of his boys outside waiting to cut him off.”

Absently, she wiped the tears away. “He knows where Ernie South... keeps his supply. He was going... to break in and...” Abruptly, the tears stopped. “You know Ernie South?” she asked me. Some of the drunkenness seemed to have drained out of her.

“We met. He’s a bum.”

Her mouth tightened. “Irish...” she opened her mouth to say something, stopped, reconsidering, then said vacantly, “He’s... his king... heroin... the worst of them all.”

“Did Fly tell you where he was going?”

“Tarbush’s Coffee Shop. Fly... he stole Ernie’s key once. He had another made.”

“He’s nuts! Ernie’ll chew him up. He can’t pull a stunt like that!”

She grinned again and nearly slid off the chair. Her eyes were half closed when she said, “No?” then her head fell forward and I caught her before she hit the floor. Lisa Williams was out like a light but there was still that satisfied grin on her mouth. I picked her up, dropped her in the bed and went out, making sure the door locked shut behind me.

I had just reached the front door of the vestibule when I saw the outline of a figure on the other side. I flattened against the wall, deep in the shadows, glad the overhead bulb was out. The door swung open and the guy standing there smirked to himself. Briefly, I caught the wink of light from the open blade in his hand, then he closed the door silently and started back toward Lisa’s room.

When I laid the barrel of the .45 across the back of his head he went down like a withering flower and I grabbed him before he hit the floor. Even in the semi-darkness I could see he was a pasty faced snake with all the evil inside him written across his features. The dark gray suit he wore was the kind they only sell south of Jacksonville and when I yanked the wallet out of his pocket I confirmed it. The driver’s license was issued to one Walter Weir of Miami, Florida. I said, “Hello, Pigeon,” and slipped the wallet back.

The car he had used was a beat up black Buick ten years old, still carrying Florida tags. Nobody saw me lug him out and if they did, nobody cared. Shouldered drunks weren’t unusual around that neighborhood even in the pre-dawn hours. Pigeon Weir did me a favor in a way. It saved hunting up a cab. I drove six blocks North and three across town to where Tarbush ran his coffee shop, an unlikely little place popularized by the trucking crowd rather than the beats. Tarbush had been nailed twice for pushing Bennies on the teenage set and did a stretch in Elmira, but if he was letting Ernie South use his place for a storehouse it looked like he never cut loose from his old connections.

Pigeon wasn’t about to come to for a long while yet so I just let him slump there half on the floor out of sight. When I saw the silhouette of a roving prowl car heading toward me, I went down beside him and waited until it passed. Then I slid out of the car and edged, toward the narrow alley that separated Tarbush’s Coffee Shop from the garage next door.

A night light was on inside, a single low wattage bulb throwing enough of a glow to make out the array of tables and the short counter with its oversized coffee urns. But it wasn’t the front section I was interested in. All the side windows were barred, and at the far end was the service entrance, a steel plated door that looked impossible to force. I swore under my breath and out of habit thumbed the latch to check it.

Without a sound, the door swung open inward. The .45 jumped into my hand and I was in with the door closed at my back and the darkness around me like a blanket. If anybody was there with his eyes already tuned to the dark, I could be a perfect target and if I moved, they could pick me out by sound as well. So I stood there waiting, the rod out and showing big and if they saw that, they knew one flash of gunfire would get a barrage back and it might not be worth the chance.

A full minute passed before I knew I was alone. I let my breath out slowly, listening to the stillness, then flicked on a match. I was alone, all right, but only in a way. Crumpled on the floor among the wreckage of cardboard cartons and scattered cans that had spilled out mounds of coffee was the pathetic body of Fly who lay there with his eyes wide open, his neck cocked at a screwy angle and a dark bluish welt on the side of his neck.

Somebody had cooled Fly the hard way. He had torn his clothes apart, ripped open seams and turned the pockets inside out and I knew damn well what he was looking for. But he never found it. Every last possibility had been exhausted and the marks of frustration were there marked by where the body had been kicked a half dozen times.

It wasn’t Fly who had opened the cans. If he had, he would have found what he came for. Idly tossed aside were two plastic wrapped packets and it didn’t take twenty questions to figure out what they held. Somebody had finished Fly’s search for him, not knowing just what it was he was after.

I looked at the body again and saw the bruise under one eye and the smashed lips. The fingernails of one hand were streaked with blood and I knew why he died too. Manos Dekker had picked up Fly’s trail somewhere but didn’t know he was dealing with a hophead half-crazy from narcotic starvation and Fly put up a fight. It was his last. He was chopped down quickly and efficiently without knowing what it was all about.

The stuff that had been in his pockets was piled on the floor, in the middle of the odds and ends, a new brass key. The match burned out and I lit another, picked up the key and went to the door and fitted it in the lock from the outside. It was the type you had to lock by key when you left with an oversize barrel bolt on the inside. In his haste, Fly hadn’t barred the door and left himself wide open for murder.

And the chase was still on.

I locked the door, went out to the car and drove it to the nearest subway station. I pulled in next to a hydrant deliberately, took the knife Pigeon was going to use on Lisa, wrapped a handkerchief around it, and rammed it up to the hilt in his tail. He never even moaned, but he would tomorrow, and he’d get the message loud and clear. I wiped the wheel clean, got out and went down the Kiosk to catch the downtown local.

Chapter 6

Statistics say most of all police cases are solved through the use of informants. There are three kinds: stoolies who squeal to ingratiate themselves with the cops, those who talk when the cops put the heat on them one way or another, and those who dump information into HQ anonymously to get the competition out of the way.

But there are others of the night people who know the same things, untouchable in their own way, living by the strange code that separates those of the badge from their own kind. And I was one of them. Once. Until they found out different I’d still be one.

I got to the hotel as the day shift was coming in and I had a chance to get a quick glance at the desk. The night man was just coming on with wrists fluttering all over the place and he looked like a whipped child every time he looked at Ames. The lobby was empty and I crossed to the elevator and as I did Ames spotted me, came around the desk and took me to one side. “You have anything in your room?”

“Nothing worth while. Why?”

“Paul... one of the bellboys... spotted the fag going in there and let me know about it. I gave him a clout in the mouth. Either he was curious or he was after your skin.”

I felt my shoulders start to crawl. “Listen...”

“It’s okay. He tried that before on somebody who was holing up here because the fuzz was looking for him. Thought he could pressure him into playing his little love games.”

“I’ll give him pressure.”

“Never mind, I took care of it. Just check your stuff. I don’t trust any of those AC-DC guys.”

“Sure.” I slapped his shoulder, threw a dirty look toward the desk and watched the guy turn away with a nervous little squeal. Nothing was missing from the room, but I had run enough shakedowns to know my stuff had been thoroughly searched. Later I’d take care of the guy my own way and he wouldn’t go snooping anywhere again.

I called the desk, got Ames just before he left and gave him Pete-the-Dog’s number. He was in a state of half sleep it took a couple of minutes to lose but he straightened up the second I told him what I wanted. I gave him the poop on Karen Sinclair’s kidnapping from the hospital and told him to spread the news to our people fast. There were always eyes around that saw everything and no matter how good you were, New York had just too many people who never seemed to sleep, whose eyes caught everything and could put the pieces together. Some of those people were ours. Pete said he’d get on it and I flopped back on the bed and closed my eyes.

It was raining when I woke. My watch said ten after five and outside in the premature dusk of fog and rain the offices were beginning to empty, spilling their occupants into taxis and subways. I cleaned up, shaved and got dressed, then headed for the Grand Canyon of New York.

On the corner I picked up a paper, scanning it to see if Fly’s body had been found. I was willing to bet it hadn’t shown up yet and if the absence of news was an indication, I was right. I scrounged up a box, packed the heroin into it, wrapped it in birthday paper and addressed it to Newbolder at the precinct house. It wouldn’t take them long to analyze the grains of coffee still sticking to the packets and locate their source. A few heads would roll and it was doing it the easy way.

Pete-the-Dog ran a news stand that was a clearing house for anything we wanted. He always knew who was under the heat and where the rabbits were holing up and if somebody had to jump fast to stay ahead of the fuzz, he saw the message got through. We always took care of our own. I caught him having a hamburger across the street from his corner spot and climbed up on a stool next to him. “What have you got, Pete?” I ordered coffee and when it came, sipped it slowly.

“You pull some big ones, Irish. Good thing you got friends. Remember Millie Slaker?”

“She still hustling?”

“Yeah. So she leaves a client where they dumped the ambulance. She seen this guy get out and walk back to the corner where another car was waiting. Millie, she’s in a doorway by now because she don’t like the setup, but she hears the guy tell the other one to stop at the Big Top for something to eat before they go back. Millie got outa there then and that was that, but I checked the Big Top Diner and Maxine Choo remembered them because they was both foreigners. Now Maxine’s a Hunkie, but she still picks up enough Polish to get the drift of their talk and hears them mention Matt Kawolski’s place down by the bridge. They was both arguing about something like if they should check in and pick up expenses right then or wait. She got kind of busy then and when she listened back in they had decided, paid up and left.

“I sent Benny down to talk to Matt but with all the seamen dropping in his place he couldn’t tell who was new and who wasn’t, besides half the guys there never spoke English anyway, and Matt, he’s too damn busy to bend an ear to somebody else’s chatter.”

I said, “Get a description from Millie?”

“What am I, dumb?” he asked indignantly. “Sure. The guy she made was average all around and you couldn’t pick him outa a crowd except he had only half an ear. Maxine didn’t see that side of him, but the other guy she said was a mug type. Tough, broken nose, that kind of jazz. You know?”

“It’s enough.”

“So you goin’ down there?”

“Tonight. Keep some of our people around.”

“Sure, they’re on the street. They won’t let up until I call ’em off, don’t take too long. They still have bucks to make and it ain’t easy. This convention crowd is a tight bunch with their loot pinned to their pockets.”

I looked at my watch. “It has to be fast.” I threw a buck on the counter to cover the bill.

Pete-the-Dog suddenly grabbed my arm. “Hey Irish, Big Step softening up?”

“What do you mean?”

“Carney said he took his spotter off Fly’s joint. Maybe he ain’t out for poor Fly no more. All the time he had that punchy Martino staked out to nail Fly if he went home and now Martino is gone.”

I started to put the pieces together and they fit nicely. When Tarbush opened he would have seen Fly’s body and gotten to Ernie South. With the cache of H gone they wouldn’t have time to play any fancy tricks, so with Big Step’s help they must have rigged it to get Fly back to his pad and let him be found there. Nice trick in the daytime, but it could be worked. Right now Ernie must be flipping with his supply of narcotics gone. I wished I had had time to shake down the place completely.

I said, “No, he’s not getting soft. See you later.”

“Sure thing.”

The darkness had closed in completely by the time I reached Matt Kawolski’s place. It was a dirty joint on the corner across the street from the river that stunk of city sewage from the vents in the area, stale beer and just plain age, but it was in a handy spot for everybody from the day crew at the nearby newspaper to the night crowd of seamen, bums and escapees from a city housing project a few blocks away. I hadn’t been there in five years so I wasn’t worried about being recognized, and Matt wouldn’t even tip his own mother to an old face.

I managed to snag Matt alone in the back kitchen and I didn’t have to paint any pictures for him. Before I could ask he said, “Blue station wagon and a late model sedan parked outside Mort Gilfern’s print shop. He don’t get much action never.”

“He the one that turns out that Commie newssheet?”

“Yeah, hands it out free to the seamen. Plays up trouble, goes for ship tieups, backs hardnosed union demands. I won’t let him in here since he was in the May Day parade. Says he’s a liberal, but I know what he is.”

“How’d you hear?”

“Billie Cole said it.” He threw a quick look to the half closed door and wiped the sweat from his face. “That guy with the half a ear...”

“What about him?”

“Billie saw him gettin’ out a car. He been there before, Billie said.”

“Thanks, Matt.”

“You gonna bring any trouble in here?”

“Nope.”

“Can if you want. Enough boys here to take care of it. They ain’t all alike. Some of you guys from uptown are scrounging around too.”

“I’ll yell if I need them.”

“Since when did you ever need anybody?” he asked and went back to cleaning out his pots under a steaming faucet.

The rain had turned from a drizzle to a hard, slashing downpour. The fog had dispersed, but the cloud bank overhead put a ceiling on the city like sealing up a tomb. Small rolling rivers cascaded along the curbs to swirl down into the sewers and aside from a hissing of occasional car tires on the wet streets, all sound had been obliterated. Even the short blasts from tugs in the river or freighters at the docks were muffled and the jets circling overhead to come in at LaGuardia or International had no more than the soft drone of a bee then were gone.

Nobody was on the street. If they were, they had slouched back into doorways or found a dry spot in one of the abandoned buildings if they couldn’t afford a beer inside a gin mill somewhere. I came out of Matt’s alone, trench coat open, hat half sideways on my head, weaving up the sidewalk like any early drunk, oblivious of the downpour. In case anyone was watching I even managed to make myself sick and chucked my cookies up against a wall. It was a nice act. It got me past the old store where Mort Gilfern had his print shop and time to case it quickly. The windows were painted over and I knew the door would be locked, but through a chip in the lettering that spelled out Mort’s name I saw a speck of yellow that meant he had a light on inside.

There was no back way in. The opposite street was a clutter of construction equipment and piles of rubble where buildings had been demolished with the debris still in gigantic piles waiting to be hauled off. A well lighted watchman’s shack was on the site and inside a pair of uniformed guards were looking out the side doors.

One was still open and I took it. I scaled a fence on the other end, forced down a rusted fire ladder and swung myself up to the landing. The stairs leading to the roof were all but rusted through and I stayed tight to the edge where the support was greatest. They were all three story buildings, most of them empty, with evidences of summertime love nests here and there, rotted army cots and soggy mattresses with empty wine bottles thrown carelessly aside. I went over the parapets, keeping to the shadows until I was on top of the building that housed Mort Gilfern on the bottom floor. Ahead of me in the night was the irregular outline of the rooftop entrance.

Mort hadn’t taken any chances. It was a steel fire door and bolted from the inside. The plating over it was fairly new and bolted in place. Unlike the other buildings, this one had no skylight. The only way down was the fire escape, a steel vertical ladder hugging the exterior wall fifteen feet to the landing and anyplace along it I would be a perfect target. I hated to lose the trenchcoat, but it was too light in color. I shucked it off and left it on the rooftop. In my black suit I would be almost impossible to spot unless a light hit me squarely.

The rain went through my clothes before I was halfway down. I made the landing and stood there a minute. Beside me a dirty window was locked in place, pigeon droppings and a mound of coal dust and grit piled along the sill showing it hadn’t been used in months. I started to feel my way down the staircase to the next floor when I saw the thin line of light that reflected on the sandstone basement and then the lightning flash cut through the cloud layer above and I froze. The thunder came immediately afterward, a dull booming that preceded a sharper crack. I was glad I had the chance to immobilize myself there. Down below I saw the faint red dot that brightened once, the tip of a cigarette that flared as the guy behind it sucked in hard.

Between the bursts of light I went back up to the top landing, waited for the flash, and when the thunder followed it, rapped a hole in the window pane and hoped the sound wasn’t heard below. It only took a second to-open the latch and get the window up, then I was inside. These old buildings were built from identical patterns to exact minimum specifications and I had no trouble feeling my way to the stairwell outside the door. I went down the steps, sweating out each creak, pausing between sounds until I was on the second floor.

The door on my left was shut, but the warp in it bowed it inwards and the light in the gap showed no sign of a chain across it. I knew they’d have it locked but that wouldn’t be any trouble at all. It would have to be quick and it would have to be exact. There wouldn’t be time for second chances. These were pros trained in a school that specialized in perfection and they wouldn’t be just sitting there idly.

As softly as I could I edged up close, the .45 cocked in my fist. Inside there was a choked sob and a harsh voice said abruptly, “Be still!” There was a foreign rasp to his words I couldn’t quite place.

There was another sob and I knew I had guessed right. It was a woman and it could be only one. This time it was the other voice that said in the same accent, “Lady, I will make you be quiet!”

He might have. I heard a chair scrape back when the other one rattled something off in what sounded like Polish and at the same time I blasted the lock off the door with the .45 and smashed the door wide open with my foot so that it splintered with a dry crack and dangled from one hinge.

They spun together and I had time to see that only one had a gun beside him on the tabletop. I blew his whole face into a bloody froth with the first shot and as the other one unlimbered a Luger from his belt already thinking he had me I took him through the chest dead center and he half flew backwards across the room as he screamed “Alex!” just once. He was dead before his head made a sodden sound against the radiator and I didn’t stand there waiting. I triggered three shots fast into the floor, backed out into the hall, listened a minute and went down the stairs fast and waited.

Maybe it took ten seconds, maybe less, but I was there first. The one who had been outside came in with all the stupidity that initial excitement brings on and forgot the rules. He remembered them a moment too late and by then he felt the gun in the back of his neck and his knees went limp with fear because he knew there was no sportsmanship in this game and he would be dead before he could move.

I said, “Upstairs,” and went behind him, the .45 barely nudging his spine right above his belt. He let out little whining noises and when he saw the two on the floor he gagged, spilling his supper down the front of his suit.

Karen Sinclair lay on a rumpled bed still wrapped in a white hospital gown. A dirty blanket was thrown carelessly over her legs and her hands were taped together on her stomach. Both ankles were taped too, the strip running around the metal framework of the bed.

Someone had wanted to see what she looked like and the gown was pulled up to her navel. She was conscious now, her eyes wide open... and now she was beautiful.

I kept the gun on the guy, pulled the gown down, flicked open the blade I carried in my pocket and sliced through the tape around her wrists and ankles. She smiled, never taking her eyes from me.

Very slowly then I turned and looked at the face of the one who had been outside.

Their eyes always got that way when they knew they were about to die. It was a dull, glassy look and a slack expression and no words because they realized that the one on the other end of the gun had the same conscience factor as they had themselves and would shoot for the fun of it if they had to. They could hardly talk with the fear, so they couldn’t lie at all. They could only hope that it would be over fast and painlessly and not with a gigantic hole in their intestines that would leave them living in hours of agony before the merciful blackness came.

I said to him, “Manos Dekker... where is he?”

A long string of saliva drooled from his mouth. He turned his head and looked at the mess on the floor. Outside there was another flash of lightning, closer this time, and the sharp roll of thunder “He...” The guy stopped there, thinking about the rules again. He swallowed, wiped his mouth and let his lips come shut.

I lifted the gun and let him look down the big hole.

He saw it. He saw the hammer back and he could smell the cordite and the blood in the room. He said, “He went back to get... the thing.”

“Where?”

And I knew he was telling the truth when the fear came back and he opened his hands helplessly. The fear was too big to let him lie, the smell of blood too strong.

I reached out and turned him around. “Look at that one,” I said.

Automatically, he looked down at the corpse on the floor, the one without any face left at all. Then I swung the .45 and laid it across the side of his head so hard the scalp split and blood and tissue splashed over my hand.

He went down without a sound, falling so that he was almost kissing the faceless body of the one by the radiator.

I went back to Karen and said, “Did they hurt you?”

“No... not yet. They... were waiting.”

“Can you walk?”

“I can try.”

“Maybe I can carry you.”

“It won’t be necessary.”

“We have to get out of here. It isn’t over yet.”

She looked down at herself, gradually swinging her legs over the edge of the bed until she was sitting up. A grimace of pain went across her face, then disappeared.

“Wait a minute,” I told her. I jacked a shell in the chamber of the Luger I took from the guy, threw it to her and raced up the stairs to the rooftop and unbolted the steel fire door. I found my trenchcoat where I threw it behind the parapet and took it back down again.

Women. They are all alike. Death they could face up to, public nakedness... never. She gave me a wry smile as I helped her into it, then followed me down the stairs. We went through the print shop and I unbolted the door so the others would have no trouble. I found the phone, dialed Shaffer’s number and got him after I identified myself. He said, “Where are you, Irish?”

“Down under the Brooklyn Bridge, a place called Mort Gilfern’s Print Shop.”

“We know it.”

“Then hit it. There are two dead guys and a cold one here waiting.”

“Did you do it?”

“All by myself, buddy. I have news for you too.”

“Oh?”

“I’m shaggin Karen Sinclair out of here too.”

“Damn you, Irish, you...”

I chopped him off fast. “You asked for this, friend, so I’m doing it my way.”

He was still swearing at me when I hung up.

Going the eight blocks before I found a taxi wasn’t easy. I had to stop a dozen times and let her rest, my arm around her waist. Beneath my hands she was a warm, live thing, big and beautiful, the gutsy type I knew she would be and each time she stiffened and I knew she was hurting bad I felt the pain myself.

The taxi took us up to the Woolsey-Lever and I went through the lobby with her, both of us putting on an act.

The rain had soaked her hair into a lovely wet backdrop against her face and her laugh was a tinkly thing I hadn’t heard before. The fag behind the desk gave us an obnoxious glance and returned to answer the switchboard with a sniff of disdain, paying no attention as we got into the automatic elevator.

I got her upstairs, into the room and laid her down gently on the bed. I undressed her then, throwing the trenchcoat and hospital gown over the back of the chair.

Both the bandages were showing a little seepage of blood through the gauze and when I pulled the sheet over her she grinned through the hurt and let her eyes close.

Naked, she was too beautiful. Even a deliberate attempt to disguise it couldn’t last long at all. I couldn’t look at her too long, didn’t dare touch her, and hated anyone that ever saw her like I was seeing her now.

“Can you wait for me?”

She opened her eyes, made a smile again. “Forever if I have to,” she said. “How do they call you?”

“Irish.”

“No other name?”

“Ryan.”

“What are you going to do now, Irish?”

“I’d hate to tell you. Sleep.”

“Yes, Irish,” I arranged the coverless pillow under her hair and let her fall back gently.

Someplace in the city another person was waiting to die. He didn’t know it yet, but he would. I knew what “The Thing” was... and I knew where “back” would be.

And now I didn’t need any more help.

With her eyes closed she said, “Irish...”

“What, honey?”

“The only... record... of where those missile pads are...”

“Yes?”

“In that capsule. It would take... six months to locate them again... and it will be too late by then. I... can’t tell... our people.”

“That’s what I thought. Don’t worry about it.”

I caught the barest glimmer of light from her pupils as she looked at me. “I won’t.”

Chapter 7

I loved the night. It was part of me, rain and all. It was an environment suited to me personally like it had been tailored that way and I put it around me like a cloak. I waved down a cab that was letting out a couple across the street, hopped in and gave him a street corner two blocks below Fly’s pad. As we passed the Paramount building I looked up and checked my watch. It was a little after one.

Somehow the rain took on a new intensity, battering against the cab. The wipers worked furiously as if they were trying to claw through the downpour. I passed a buck over the driver’s shoulder and got out, waited until he left and walked the rest of the way in total solitude. It was coming down too hard for anyone to be on the streets at all, even to look for a taxi and that’s the way I wanted it.

The place where Fly had lived was in the basement rooms of a brownstone tenement, ugly places that were born with New York and now stood like decayed teeth in the jaws of the city. Cars were parked, nose to bumper along the curb, some junk heaps, others new and expensive from the newer apartments a few blocks away, the owners grabbing any available parking space as close as they could get to home. They would be lucky if they had tires left tomorrow.

I made my pass of the place from the opposite side, then crossed over and came back. I could be a target from a rooftop or window but I had to take the chance. There wasn’t enough time left to case it thoroughly. When I reached the building I didn’t hesitate, I took the short flight of stairs in two jumps, held in the shadows a second, then pushed the battered grill door back. I listened, but the noise of the rain didn’t let any other sound filter through. The other door was already open, held against the wall with a brick.

With the .45 pushed ahead of me I went inside, feeling my way along the wall until I came to Fly’s door. As carefully as I could, I turned the knob, nudged the door gently so that it eased back until it touched the arm of a chair and stopped. The only light in the room came from the street lamps outside, an ineffectual pale amber reflection barely able to reach through rain and filthy glass panes.

But it was enough. Fly’s body was there, all right, his neck still at that strange angle.

It was more than enough too because it let me see the other body stretched face down a few feet away almost hidden in the deeper shadows of a sofa.

I stood there, crouched to one side of the door jamb, letting my eyes become accustomed to the gloom, ears straining to catch any sound. Little by little I could see the ruin of the place, the sliced open furniture, the scattered junk all over the floor.

No, the job had been done. Two dead men and a ransacked apartment meant that they had come and gone. I stepped inside, walked to the other body on the floor and turned the head to one side.

It was Big Step’s watcher, Martino. I put my foot under him and flipped him over. Whoever had placed the knife into him had done the neatest, most professional job I had ever seen. It had been expertly thrust and Martino had been dead without ever knowing it. A few glassy-eyed steps maybe, but that was all. It was the kind of thrust and tear wound only a trained expert like Manos Dekker could deliver.

When I looked around the place I saw the similarity of pattern there. It was like the back of Tarbush’s Coffee Shop, every available hiding place being torn apart in the search, nothing missed.

And nothing found, either. The shakedown had started at one side and gone to the other, winding up at the door beside the upturned table. I grinned to myself because I knew it wasn’t too late yet. That capsule was still hidden somewhere. Manos Dekker might know where ordinary people would stash a hot item, but he wasn’t dealing with ordinary people. He was up against a hop-head guarding his most valued treasure, his security against slow death.

I stood in the middle of the room and peered through the semi-darkness, objects beginning to become apparent. Dekker had done most of the work for me already. It didn’t take much more. There was hardly an item that hadn’t been ripped or smashed, taken apart minutely in the futile search.

There wasn’t much to it really. Too many addicts used the same gimmick, each thinking they had pulled an original trick. I picked up the cheap ceramic lamp whose hollow base had been smashed open, knocked the dented shade off and looked at the bulb. It was unbroken, but not screwed all the way down. I gave it a couple of turns and it came out in my hand. The capsule so many people had died for was there inside the socket. I dumped it out and held it in my hand.

Behind me Big Step said, “Don’t move, Ryan. Not one move or you have a hole in you big enough to throw a cat through. Lay that rod on the table. Easy.”

And now it was over. All the way. The muscles under my skin were bunched and jumping and I knew there wasn’t any use trying for the long shot. All I could do was stay alive as long as I could. I let the capsule dribble between my fingers unseen and heard it roll on the floor. Very elaborately, careful to let him see how I was doing it, I laid the .45 on the table and turned around.

Big Step wasn’t alone. Ernie South was right next to him with a gun in his hand too and the smile he wore said I was ripe for dying any second. Step bumped Ernie with his elbow. “Close those curtains on the window.”

Ernie nodded, walked around me and yanked the cord on the Venetian blinds, then pulled the drapes over them. The dust came out in a small cloud and I thought for a second I might be able to move in the almost total darkness. But Step thought of it too and flipped the light switch on before I had the chance.

“I knew you’d come back, Irish. I knew you’d sucker yourself right into my hands.”

“So I’m a jerk.”

“A big one. We were waiting upstairs.” He grinned at me slowly, his hate filled eyes black with a wild passion. “Killing Fly was stupid, Irish. You think you could tie us into it by letting him stay at Tarbush’s? Ernie and me, we got him back here and when you put a shiv in old Martino you even did us a favor. So the cops make it out like Fly stuck him and he had a chance to break the creep’s neck before he died.”

“Where’s the knife, Step?” I asked casually.

“Come off it, punk. Who cares? We’ll put another one in the hole.” He moved away from the door and sat back on the arm of the old wooden chair by the wall. “So you catch Fly raiding Ernie’s warehouse. You figure he got more tucked away here and come looking for it, only you gotta kill Martino first.” He gave a slow glance around the room, then back to me. “Fly did a damn good job of hiding it, but if Ernie has to tear this place apart board by board, he’ll find it. That’s just too much loot to throw away. And me, I got what I want, Irish, I got you.”

Ernie said, “He stashed those packets of H, Step. Don’t you bump him until he talks.” He looked at me, teeth bared with anger. “Or do you want to make it easy on yourself.”

I shrugged, watching them both for any opening at all. “I don’t have your junk.”

“Suit yourself, buddy,” Ernie said. “I’m going to enjoy playing with you.” He got up and walked around behind me. I just started to swing when the butt of his gun smashed into my skull with a crack I barely heard before all sight and sound disappeared into a maelstrom of ink and I felt myself falling from a great height.

How long it was, I couldn’t tell. I came to with a rush of sudden pain that swept down from the top of my head and invaded my whole body. My hands and legs were behind me and when I made a spasmodic move there was a tug at my neck and a cord tightened there almost shutting off my breath.

Big Step still sat there, smiling pleasantly, enjoying the scene. “The Capone loop, Irish. Every move makes it tighter. Soon you’ll get a cramp and you’ll be able to feel yourself die inches at a time.”

“Where is it, Irish?” Ernie South asked me.

I let out a strangled sound and shook my head. What a damn fool I was! Big Step was right when he called me a sucker. I try it alone and blow the whole bit including myself. A woman I wanted and a whole world might die because I was a damn idiot. All I had to do was make a phone call.

Big Step got up, pulled the chair around so he could watch me and sat down in it, his legs stretched out in front of him. “Take it slow, Irish. This is for Penny and Little Step. My brothers.” A look of pain crossed his face. “They was kids, Irish. You got them both dead. However the hell you worked it, I don’t know, but you got them dead and you’re paying.” He glanced over at Ernie and said, “If he goes out loosen up that cord and start him over again. We got plenty of time.”

Ernie nodded agreeably. “He’ll start talking a couple times around.”

“Sure be will, won’t you, Irish? You’ll tell Ernie what you did with his stuff then I’ll kill you quick for killing Penny and Little Step.”

The voice from the door said, “He didn’t kill Penny, Step.” I couldn’t move an inch except for my eyes. Ernie and Big Step both make quick moves toward their belts, but stopped halfway there. Leaning up against the door jamb with a flat black automatic in her hand was Lisa Williams and she was gassed to the ears, a drunken smirk twisting her mouth in a crazy smile, her eyes glassy, her hair in wet strings down her head. The broken nose, the scars on her face stood out lividly, giving her a frightening appearance.

Both Ernie and Big Step looked at each other, not wanting to take a chance with a drunk with a gun, but it was Big Step who spoke first, just trying to make enough conversation to get her off guard. “What you say, Lisa?”

“Irish didn’t kill your brother, Step, but I’m going to kill you. I promised myself that a long time ago, and now I’m going to do it.” She eyed the two bodies on the floor, looked briefly at me and her lips pulled into a taut snarl. “You had to kill Fly and him and now you want to kill Irish too. You damn louse.”

“Look you drunken bum...”

“You didn’t have to kill Fly, Step.”

He half rose from the chair. “Put that rod away, Lisa. This punk here bumped Fly. You think I...”

“Sit down, Step.” She pointed the gun at his middle, but still keeping Ernie in view. “You don’t have to tell me anything. I can see for myself. I know things like I know who killed Penny.”

Big Step scowled, seemed to crouch in the chair. “Who, Lisa?”

“Ernie South here.” She looked across the room at him and gave a silly laugh.

Big Step’s frown deepened and he turned to stare at Ernie. “What the hell’s she talking about?”

I could see Ernie, too. He was sweating. “She’s drunk,” he blurted.

“Sure I am,” Lisa told him, “But I know. You think he was Penny’s friend? Like hell he was. You handed over territory to Penny he wanted for himself and he hated Penny’s guts. He got him out all right. All he had to do was wait and when Penny went for Irish with his big mouth and what he was going to do, Ernie killed him.”

The sweat was really there now and Big Step saw it too. He let his eyes slide from Ernie back to Lisa and asked, “How’d you find out?”

“Fly told me.”

Ernie stood up in a rage, his hands trembling. “A goddamn hophead tells a drunk and you listen to her? What kind of...”

“I think it makes sense, Ernie,” Big Step said. “I heard noises like that from the boys. Moe tried to tell me and so did Carl Hoover and I wouldn’t listen, but I’m listening now.” His hand moved closer to his belt when he turned back to Lisa. “How did Fly know, Lisa?”

She laughed again, never taking the gun off him. “He saw him. He was looking for him to hit him up for some H and saw him. He was saving the story until he wanted to put some real heat on Ernie for a big bundle, only now he’ll never be able to do it.” Her face changed slowly and tears ran down the side of her face. “You killed Fly like you did me and now you go, Step.”

The flat look on Big Step’s face I had seen before. It was a death look and it was aimed at Ernie South. The narcotics dealer went white as the powder he peddled and every cord in his neck stood out like fingers. “Damn you, Lisa... she’s lying... she’s...” He never finished. His hand streaked for the gun in his belt, found and fired it in a split second and doubled Lisa up in the doorway as the slug took her right in the stomach.

But the sound of it was lost in the bigger roar of Step’s rod that bucked in his hand and put a hole in Ernie South’s temple and drove him over the arm of the couch. He got up then, smiling like it was an everyday occurrence, thumbed back the hammer and walked over to me. “Too bad, Irish, but I can’t leave you here to talk, y’know?” He pointed the gun at my head and I closed my eyes.

The blast came, a sharp, flat crack and I felt the concussion on my cheeks. There was no pain, no sensation at all. I forced my eyes open, looked up, hardly able to breathe. Above me Big Step Stipetto was arching in the final dance of death, his eyes staring in disbelief, the hole that went through his neck from back to front pumping blood furiously until the torn spinal cord got its last message through to his brain and he crumpled in a heap, dead.

In back of him Lisa still held the smoking automatic in her hand, every muscle in her body wracked with pain.

I couldn’t tell her. I had to hope she could see what had to be done. And it was her still present hatred of Big Step that made her do it before she died. She had to undo anything he had done and somehow she inched across the floor until she reached me and I felt her fingers fumble the loop from my neck. With her last remaining energy she unknotted my wrists, smiled wistfully and fell back.

“Thanks, honey,” I said, and touched her face gently. I let the feeling come back in my hands and finished untying my ankles. When it was done I knelt down beside her. “Don’t move, kid, I’ll get a doctor.”

She let her eyes come open and the drunkness was gone from them now. There was a new look in its stead. “No use, Irish. It’s better this way.”

“Lisa...”

“Kiss me goodbye, Irish?” Somehow there was no smashed nose, no scars, and she looked like she must have when she was a Broadway star. Gently, I leaned down, touched my lips to hers, then her face relaxed while I watched her and she took her last curtain call.

I found the capsule where I dropped it, wrenched it apart and made sure the microfilm was still there, then put it back together and stuck it in my pocket. Outside I heard the wail of sirens and cut for the door. I had to beat the cops out or I’d be held sure as hell and the big killer was still loose. I pulled the grill back, started up the steps when the wall powdered beside me and I heard the crack of a gun from across the street. I was pinned there with no chance of breaking out and the first squad car came to a screaming halt at the curb. I took the cap out of my pocket, dropped it in the cuff of my pants and waited.

Newbolder and Schmidt didn’t want to believe me. Five corpses were in the room and I was there alive with a .45 in my belt and to them it was all cut and dried. They had me where the hair was short and were enjoying it. But it was the move with the packets of heroin that turned the trick. When I asked Newbolder who he thought mailed them in and why, he stopped Schmidt’s impatient move to get me in a squad car and said, “Keep talking, Irish.”

“Not me. There’s no time. You just get a call through on your radio.” I gave him Shaffer’s number and said, “Your office will know who it is. If you tie me up now there will be hell to pay tomorrow.”

Schmidt grabbed my arm. “Let him do his talking downtown.”

“No, wait a minute,” Newbolder said. “This whole thing’s screwy enough right now and I don’t want to go on a chopping block when we can clear it now. You keep him here.” He looked at Shaffer’s card in his fingers thoughtfully and went outside through the crowd to his car.

He took about five minutes and when he came back his face was screwed up into a puzzled mask and he was shaking his head. “How the living hell do you do it, Ryan? How the hell do you work it?”

Schmidt said, “What’s the pitch?”

“Later, I’ll tell you later. Let him go.”

“Are you nuts?”

“No, but you will be if you don’t keep your hands off. Okay, Ryan, take off. Tomorrow we’ll get a report. A personal one. I’ll want that whole agency staff present with every document of authorization they have to make this one stand up. I want to hear this from front to end and get it in writing so I can read it every time I think there’s an angle I don’t know about. Now get your tail out of here to wherever you’re going before I change my mind and take a chance of being caught in the wringer.” He handed me the gun with a look of disgust and I walked out. Before I hit the street I got the capsule back and stuck it in my pocket.

I didn’t wait for the elevator. I went up the stairs to my floor and half ran down the corridor. Then I stopped. The door stood open an inch and when I shoved it back I could see the whole interior of the room in the bright light from the overhead, bed and all.

Karen Sinclair was gone.

I walked in slowly, stood looking at the open window that led out to the fire escape, then switched off the light. The wind had changed direction and a sheet of rain came through and whipped across the floor. I peered out into the night, swearing at the blackness for the first time. They had time and they had the room. I had been delayed long enough for the snatch to be made and there was no way in the world of telling where they had taken her.

I slumped down on the bed, my face in my hands, trying to figure it out. Somehow I had left a trail in the hotel and they picked it up. But how? Damn it, I wasn’t that sloppy. I had been the route too many times. One mistake somewhere along the line. That was all it took.

How long I sat there I couldn’t tell. The floor and end of the bed was soaked, my shoes and pants legs drenched. Then the phone rang. Unconsciously, out of habit, I picked it up. “Hello.” The voice didn’t sound like my own at all.

“Good evening,” the other one said. The voice was harsh with a curious accent, the tone inviting like it was waiting to be asked to tell a huge joke.

I sat up slowly, feeling the chill run down my back. “Manos Dekker,” I said.

“You are a hard man to kill,” he told me pleasantly. I waited, not trusting my voice. “You have something I want. I have something you want. I believe a trade is in order.”

I went to answer him and a pair of clicks, a piece of a word interrupted the connection before it was reestablished and I said, “I’ll deliver. How?” I had no choice. No choice at all.

“Ah, that is very good. Then we shall arrange it.”

“Let me speak to her first. I’m not paying for a dead body.”

I knew she’d be alive. He’d know I’d insist upon it. He called out, speaking away from the phone and once again the connection was interrupted for a split second, then I heard her voice saying, “Don’t do it, Irish.”

Manos Dekker laughed softly to himself. “Oh, he will do it all right. He is a very decent American. He is like all the others of his kind. Very sentimental.”

“Okay, Dekker, you call it.”

“Yes, I will,” he laughed again. “I will call you back within minutes and tell you what it is you have to do. I wouldn’t advise any interference in the matter. You understand, of course?”

“I understand,” I said, my voice cold with the fear in it. He hung up before I did and I put the receiver back slowly.

There was a flaw somewhere. I could feel it. I had it in my hand if I could figure it out. I took it apart piece by piece, bit by bit, going over the picture from the minute I met Karen, remembering every detail of the action.

It took a while, but I got it.

Now I knew where she was and how I was going to work it.

I jacked a load into the breech of the .45, thumbed the hammer back and went out to the elevator and took it down to the lobby. The little fag at the desk had his back to me answering a call on the PBX board when I reached him. I went around the counter and put the gun against his spine and watched him stiffen. He turned around, his face a ghastly gray, his lips quivering as he saw my face.

“You Commie bastard,” I said.

“Please...” he lifted his hands defensively.

“How’d they get you in... use sex appeal? Or was it your hate for everybody in the world in general.”

“I... I’m not...”

“Shut up. I saw a photo of you in a special file the Feds have on all Commie sympathizers. It was taken a while ago and you weren’t in half-drag and without the usual makeup you didn’t quite look the same, but I put it together. You even helped. You cut in on my talk with Dekker because you were scared stiff and loused up your connections at the switchboard there. When Lennie Ames mentioned my name you reported in like a good stoolie. They told you I was hot and where I stood and you were the pipeline. You saw me bring the girl in and got to them right away and they set the deal up right here on the premises. Cute, kiddo, real cute.”

I let him see my best grin, all the teeth. I let him look at the snout of the rod and said, “She’s in the hotel, buddy-boy, buddy-boy. I’m guessing she’s in your room. Am I right?”

The look he gave me told me I was. I reached in his pocket, found the key. Number 309.

“Let’s go,” I said.

I wasn’t in a hurry now. I was going to do this one easy and my way. We got out of the elevator, walked down the hall nice and slowly, the queer’s knees dancing with fright. He was as bad as the worst of them in his own way and he was paying for it. I was willing to bet this wasn’t the first operation he had been on and when he was checked out all the way he’d wind up with a dossier an inch thick and loaded with names. Too many people in the striped pants departments of Washington agencies played games with these types and wound up being patsies for a blackmail racket worked by the Soviets.

When we reached the door I eased the key in, the gun in his back telling the guy not to make a sound. I turned it, felt the latch go back and took the chance the chain was strung in place. Then I turned the knob, shoved the door open and rammed the desk clerk into the room with the flat of my hand.

He was quick, all right. The gun seemed to jump into his hand and the first shot took the clerk through the chest. And I had the time I needed. Manos Dekker saw the play and knew he couldn’t make it and in a desperate attempt to wash it out the most horrible way he knew he whipped the gun in his hand toward the bed but before he could pull the trigger my .45 roared and blew the thing out of his hand, fingers and all. He looked at the bloody mess on the end of his wrist, no longer the killer he was, a fanatic with a political drive that matched his own lusts and made him a big cog in a big machine. He looked back at me, knew what was coming and tried to open his mouth to scream or plead or do anything to stop it. He opened his mouth wide and I shot him right through that gaping hole in his face and he slammed head first into the wall splattering his blood and brains all over the place.

Karen Sinclair looked up at me from the bed and smiled, her eyes bright and shiny. He hadn’t done anything to her. He would have, but he hadn’t. My luck ran just a little too good. I took out the capsule from my pocket and held it out. She opened her hand and I let it fall into her palm.

The way she looked at me and I knew I was looking at her said that it was just the beginning for the both of us. There was a long road to be walked and we’d be doing it together. The hood was gone because my own would never let me back again when the story came out and I had to walk the other side of the street whether I liked it or not. Shaffer didn’t realize what he had gotten himself into.

Karen looked at the capsule in her hand as I bent down to kiss her. Her mouth was a full, wetly warm blossom that tried to envelop me, her tongue tasting me, one finger tracing a line along my face. I stood up and reached for the phone to dial Shaffer’s number.

She said, “How many people are in New York, Irish?”

“Many millions, doll.”

Karen looked at the capsule, then smiled at me, the beauty of her like starlight on a clear night.

“I knew I gave it to the right one,” she said.