The New Black Mask Quarterly (No 2)

Michael Avallone A Bullet for Big Nick

Michael Avallone, who calls himself “the fastest typewriter in the East,” has published 207 novels and some 1,000 short stories or articles. He is perhaps best known for his Ed Noon private-eye novels. “A Bullet for Big Nick,” Noon’s first case, was written in 1949 but did not see print until 1958. Mr. Avallone lives in East Brunswick, New Jersey, surrounded by his movie, baseball, and detective-story collections.

A good cop was dead. I had to do something about it. So I went down that night to see Big Nick Torrento at the Blue Grotto club. If a bigshot hood has no use for policemen, he has absolutely no time for private detectives.

Velvet, one of Nick’s hand maidens, with blue chin and gun to match, made that pretty obvious at the door leading to Torrento’s sanctum sanctorum. I didn’t stop to talk. I hit him with all the hate I had in me. I wasn’t thinking very straight. I had spent a terrible five minutes at the police morgue trying to recognize what was left of my friend, Mike Peters. I might never be able to eat hamburger again.

I was inside Big Nick’s office, locking the door behind me fast, and digging out my .45. I wanted to be alone with the man I was sure had ordered the murder of Mike Peters.

“Hey! Who let you in here without knocking?”

Big Nick Torrento was staring at me curiously from the depths of a large, square desk. The marble inlaid top gleamed. His black eyes popped, then narrowed shrewdly.

“What kinda amateur show is this, Eddie? I got enough entertainment for the club right now.”

Torrento didn’t scare easy. He was Big Nick, owner of his own night club and a mob ruler on the same plane with the Capones and the Anastasias of old. His small, black eyes glittered with contempt for me. The simple fact that he had not raised his fat, ring-studded fingers was just another display of that contempt.

I moved slowly from the doorway, poking the .45, trying to keep a red haze out of my brain. “Evening, Nick. I came for a chat.”

He grunted, rolling his cigar to the left side of his swab-lipped mouth. “How the hell did you get past Velvet? He never leaves my door. These monkeys of mine are getting careless.”

“Velvet’s all tied up right now,” I said. “You’ve got a nice place here, Nick. Keeps your boys busy.”

I could see he had reached the annoyance stage.

“You didn’t come here to tell me what a nice dump I got. You better explain that hardware you’re pushing in my face before I press a lot of buttons that’ll get you a lot of bruises.”

I didn’t answer him directly. I jerked the slide of the .45, sending a shell into firing position. I had said plenty. Nick scowled, the angry furrows in his forehead deepening.

“C’mon, Ed. What’s on your mind?”

I smiled. “Big Nick. That’s you. Ed Noon. That’s me. If Mike Peters was here, we could play a swell game of asking questions.”

“What are you talking about, shamus?”

“I just came from the police morgue, Nick. You tell me. What’s that poor kid now? Animal, vegetable, or mineral?”

“Oh, I get it now.” Big Nick Torrento was smiling almost sympathetically at me. “Look, Ed. You can’t pin that dead cop on this syndicate. We’re legal. All through with the rough stuff.” His tone was righteous and I had an uncontrollable urge to punch his face.

“Now that’s funny. Velvet gave me the same argument out in the hall. But when he tried to back it up with brass knuckles, I gave him the back of my hand.”

Nick Torrento puffed on his cigar.

“Okay. You and Mike Peters were friends. He was a swell guy and the department’ll give him a swell funeral. Maybe a medal. But why blame me? If you hadn’t quit the force six months ago for this private eye stuff, you might have been with him on his last job and it might not have happened.”

That had been bothering me too.

“I might have been. But I wasn’t and it did happen. Which brings us right up to date, Nick. Me, with a gun on your belly in your own little rat hole.”

The office was large, soundproofed and plush. Just the type the movies lead everyone to expect in the rear of fancy night clubs run by gangsters. Only you never got to see them unless you reneged on a bet or your check bounced.

Big Nick leaned back in his chair, little eyes squinting hard. “What have you got in mind, Ed? This can cost you your license when I get in touch with my mouthpiece. So you better make it good.”

I showed him the nose of the .45. “You’re on my mind, Nick. You hold more appeal for me right now than Elizabeth Taylor.”

“Yeah? What does that mean?”

“Just this.” I leaned across the desk. “When I can pin this one on you, when I know for a fact that you killed that kid, there’s one in here with your name on it.” I tapped the barrel of the .45.

“You’re crazy!” he roared.

“Am I? Mike Peters was working on your policy set-up. Don’t bother to deny it. He told me about it three days before you stopped him.”

Big Nick’s beefy face paled, then reddened to nearly match the heavy carmine drapes behind his chair that blotted out the light of the alley.

“Listen, punk.” He bounced to his feet angrily. “Nobody tells Big Nick what they’re going to do. He tells them! The next move is mine, dummy.” His big paw shot swiftly out of sight behind the desk. The hidden buttons routine.

I was glad he tried it. I chopped the .45 down in a vicious arc. The .45’s barrel made a crunching noise that rang like music in my ears. Torrento shrieked like a woman and fell back into his chair. I followed him, coming around the desk and ramming the muzzle of the .45 into the base of his heavy chin.

“Feel it, Nick. Feel it. Like Mike Peters did when your boys worked him over with their blackjacks. Couldn’t you give him a bullet, Nick? One quick slug? No, you had to pretty him up so they’d have a hard time identifying him. That was not nice, Nick, not nice at all.”

Torrento strangled and swore. He tried to get out of the way but the gun pinned him to the chair. His black eyes were wide open now, in fear and bewilderment. His tongue lolled.

“Ed, whaddyaaaa—” he gagged. I reached down and dragged him to his feet. His bulk shivered. For one second, we stood eye to eye. Torrento, a fat, gasping hoodlum made rich by a world of suckers. Me, a poor man trying to tilt at a windmill. The only thing that separated our worlds and our intellects at this moment was the gun in my hand.

I hit him. His face dissolved in front of me in a blur of impact. The swivel chair squeaked noisily as his suddenly deposited bulk sat down again. His face twisted sightlessly toward the ceiling of his plush office.

I stared down at him. My forefinger tightened on the trigger of the .45. I had to shake my head to clear it of murder. Mike’s bloody, battered face kept looking at me from the slab down at headquarters.

I heard the phone ringing suddenly. A jangling, jarring tingle of sound that brought me back to the present and where I was. Enemy territory.

It rang again. I scooped it to my ear, keeping an eye on the door, wondering how long it would take for Big Nick’s cavalry to show up.

“Yeah?” I made my voice gruff and careless like Big Nick’s. On a hunch.

“Nickie! I’m so glad you’re in. It’s me, Dolly. Nickie, I’m scared.” It was a girl’s voice, soft yet hard with fear. I thought fast. Dolly. Dolly Warren. The featured blues singer at the club. Nick’s club, the Blue Grotto. The lovely face on the show case display outside.

“Keep talking,” I said. “I’m busy.”

“Oh, Nickie. I’m just getting ready to come down to the club for my number when I happen to look out the window and, Nickie, there’s a man watchin’ my place! I noticed him this mornin’ too.” She was wailing like a sick kid.

She was scared all right. I had heard fear before and she sounded like she had a solid dose.

“Stay put,” I barked into the transmitter. “I’ll send somebody over.”

“Oh, Nickie.” She was moaning again. “I’m scared.”

“Shut up,” I said.

“Do you think it has anything to do with that cop you had to get rid of?”

“You crazy canary, don’t talk no more.”

That’s the way Big Nick would have shut her up. I never knew how I managed to keep the elation out of my voice. Right in my lap. She hadn’t said it all but she had said enough. Later, I’d make her sing her head off in front of the police.

Dolly Warren started to mumble apologies but I cut her off. “Stay where you are. Be right over.”

My fingers were trembling when I put the phone down. I bolstered the .45 before I blasted Torrento right where he sat. Mike Peters’ murder had hit me harder than I thought. But I needed more proof before I delivered the bullet to Big Nick.

I got out of the office, leaving him inert in the chair behind me. I carefully checked the long, low-ceilinged corridor. The hall was empty. The landing that led into the environs of the club showed no trouble.

Velvet was exactly where I had left him. Manacled to the railing, midway from Big Nick’s private office. The strongarm man’s eyes glared at me above the handkerchief wadded firmly in his jaws.

I retrieved the cuffs. Velvet tore at the gag and I let him have it again with the butt end of the .45. He collapsed without a whimper.

But my luck had changed. Coming over the landing on the dead run were a trio of shiny-haired men who must have spotted the scene from above. One quick look was enough. They were Big Nick’s boys and loaded for bear.

I raced back the way I had come as a hoarse shout went up and gunfire ripped the confines of the corridor. I snapped a shot over my shoulder to discourage pursuit. It did. There was a mad scramble of dress suits for sections of safety.

There was a large frame window at the alley side of the end of the hall. I’d come in that way. It could serve as an exit, too. The alley was about six feet down.

I had one leg over the sill, ready to snap off another shot, when a noisy, searing poker buried itself somewhere in my left shoulder. The impact of the bullet sent me flying through the wide opening and I fell the rest of the way. The alley bottom crunched like conch shells beneath me. Knives of agony shot up my legs, reached the burning shoulder and the poker throbbed like a pneumatic drill. Behind me, more guns crashed.

I jerked another shot upward and lurched down the alley toward the street. Hugging the wall, I half ran, half dragged myself to my car.

I had finally stopped one. After years in the war and one police battle after the other, I had finally caught my bullet.

But all that was really unimportant; the only thing that counted was the bullet for Big Nick Torrento.

Dolly Warren was going to help me deliver that one.

She was gorgeous. Very gorgeous.

Milk skin, red mouth and dazzling blond hair that had to be her own. But she was stupid too. I could see it in the off-color eyes when she swung the door back and peered suspiciously at me over a span of chain lock.

“Who are you? What do you want? I don’t know you.”

“Nick sent me, Dolly. About that call and the party outside your window.” I had to fight to keep the agony out of my voice. The shoulder had become a throbbing fire. The bullet had gone right on through without hitting a bone but it had cost me more blood than a handkerchief could stop.

“You must be a new one. Come on in. I got the creeps I guess.” The door swung inward as she drew the chain with a clank of sound. She had been obviously drinking and was still too frightened to make the effort at thinking.

I followed her through a tiny hallway into one of the most expensively furnished apartments I’d ever been in on Central Park South. There were rich, deep rugs scattered all over the floor, fancy objets d’art cluttering every inch of the place. Nothing matched. The extreme decor of a built-in bar in the living room wasn’t lost on me in spite of my condition.

Dolly Warren plumped down on a mountainous divan of fluffy cushions and poured herself a stiff drink from a chrome decanter. She looked at me as she swallowed her drink.

“Where’s Nickie?” she snapped peevishly. “Why didn’t he come? After all, I’m his girl.”

I managed a weak smile. “Cops paid him a visit. Routine stuff. So Nick had to hang around to answer some questions. After all, he isn’t running a civic center, lady.”

She sneered and her beautiful face suddenly wasn’t beautiful. “Funny man.” A cloud shadowed her sneer. “You don’t think their comin’ had anythin’ to do with— Say! What did you say your name was?”

I sat down with a short laugh, keeping my left side away from her so she couldn’t see the stiff hang of the shoulder.

“Williams. Ted Williams. How about a drink, hon?”

I tapped the decanter so that it rang like a bell. She shrugged her bared shoulders and for the first time I was conscious of what she was wearing. A low-cut evening gown with a sash arrangement that accented her tigerish hips. I concluded it was the outfit she wore when she did her stuff at the Blue Grotto. She didn’t have to sing in an outfit like that. I also concluded that she didn’t know anything about baseball, the Washington Senators, or anything. The sky might be the limit, she was so stupid. Names meant nothing to her.

“I signed on with Nick last week,” I explained as I might to a child. “I like a big operator. And Nick’s plenty big enough for me. I go for a guy who’s not afraid of the cops.”

“Nick’s not scared of anything.” She nodded so hard her golden curls seemed to dance. “When one of those guys get too close, he swats them down like flies.”

“Just like this Peters copper, huh?”

“Just like that—” She stiffened and for a moment a flash of reasoning came into her blank light blue eyes. It was gone just as quickly. Her fright had come back.

“Never mind about that now. What about that guy beneath my window? Ain’t you goin’ to go down and see who he is?”

I shrugged my good shoulder at her. “What guy? Listen, I cased this place before coming in. If there was anybody hanging around before, he’s gone now.”

She flounced to the window and peered through dotted Swiss curtains. She whirled in disbelief. “He’s gone! How do you like that? He’s not there anymore.” She clamped her hands to her forehead.

I remained where I was. “What’s the matter, gorgeous?”

She wrung her red-tipped hands.

“Nick’ll beat my brains out for draggin’ him up here on a wild goose chase. But I swear there was somebody — oh, I need a drink.”

She had two before she came up for air. I watched her with no expression on my face but a silly grin to hide the dull throb of the bad shoulder.

Dolly Warren was pretty drunk now but I let the drinks settle a while longer. I nursed my own drink getting as much good out of it as I could. It helped me forget the bullet hole.

“What’s so funny?” She flung the question at me angrily.

“Just remembered a funny story a fellow told me the other day.”

She brushed the curls out of her eyes. “Yeah? Well, don’t get funny. You’re cute but I’m Nick’s girl and he don’t like nobody to get funny with me except him.”

“Nick’s a pretty funny guy himself.”

“Ain’t he though? Just like a big monkey.” She ripped out a sudden throaty laugh. “You’re sharp, Ted. Real sharp.”

She fell back against the mountain of pillows with a seizure of laughter. Deep-chested, gutty, hard laughter. I knew it for what it was. She was getting hysterical.

I got up, reached her, and took her soft arm at the elbow. I squeezed the flesh gently. Sweat wasn’t making me feel exactly cool but I shook the feeling off. Dolly Warren wasn’t in any condition to notice.

“Nick’s sharp too, Dolly. Nobody should ever cross Big Nick,” I said.

That sobered her up a bit. “You said it. Wait’ll you’re around with him a little longer. You’ll see.”

“I don’t have to be around long, Dolly. I read what happened to that cop Peters.”

“Peters?” she simpered. “That’s different. He was a cop and on Nick’s back. He got too close to Nick’s policy racket. So Nickie shut him up good.” She made a cute expression with her face. I was grim, as she was singing her head off.

“I need a drink.” I wasn’t making conversation anymore.

“Where’s Nickie?” She was impatient again, rubbing her elbow with one slender hand. She stood up, swaying. “Wait — we both need a refill. This waitin’ drives you nuts, don’t it?” She lurched over to the miniature bar and ducked behind its shiny back to rummage for something. Reappearing with a new bottle, she filled our glasses to the brim.

I arched my back to ease the deadness of my arm. I slid the .45 out of its harness and pointed it at Dolly Warren. She was bringing back the drinks with drunken alacrity when she saw the gun in my hand.

Flinging her hands to her face, she let the glasses crash to the floor. The flush of intoxication and her natural bloom of health drained right out of her curved cheeks.

“Sit down, sister.”

She sat down without a murmur, her arms dangling without control, her soft body completely spent. Her vacant blue eyes got a shade darker.

“You’re not from Nick,” she moaned.

“No, I’m not.”

“You’re a cop!”

I shook my head. “No, Dolly. I’m the friend of a cop. A very dead cop. Mike Peters. Remember him, Dolly?”

“No!” It screamed out of her.

“He was a very good looking boy before he met up with those blackjacks.”

Half mad with fright now, she sagged on the divan, one long, lovely leg trailing to the floor. She stared at me, her eyes wide pools of terror. She was a child who had just found out the Sandman was real.

“What are you going to do? I didn’t have anything to do with it, I tell you.”

I reached, grabbed a handful of her luxuriant curls and yanked her to a sitting position. She cried out with the pain of it and sat back gasping, her breasts heaving.

“Don’t lie to me, Dolly. I want the whole rotten truth. Mike never would have gotten himself holed up in a dark alley like that unless a beautiful dish like you had arranged to meet him there. That was Mike’s weakness. Beautiful dishes. But it’s not mine.”

She tried to clutch my gun hand in a burst of mad courage but I didn’t let her. My open hard palm flicked twice. Two angry streaks of red flamed her cheeks.

“I want it now, Dolly. A full confession. It’s that or this toy in my hand goes off. Know what a .45 would do to your face at this range?”

“Don’t,” she blubbered. “Not that. Honest, you got me all wrong. I never—”

She halted suddenly and the swift flash of relief that flooded her eyes made me freeze where I stood. I didn’t turn or bat an eyelash. I’d forgotten about the front door. My burning shoulder and my blind anger had made me forget a lot of things.

“Don’t move or you’re a dead man,” somebody behind me said in a voice that had no emotion at all. A door slammed shut violently and footsteps slithered in the foyer.

I spread my hands. The automatic fell to the rug. There wasn’t anything else to do now. I waited. Dolly Warren rushed forward, crying.

“Get around, don’t you, Eddie?” I didn’t have to turn around to know that Big Nick Torrento had put two and two together and come up with a fast, workable four.

They moved into the room from the fancy foyer. Big Nick Torrento, a battered looking Velvet and another hood whose face was new to me but his expression wasn’t. They all had their hats on and the pair flanking Big Nick also had guns.

Torrento’s face was a flabby mask of anger and Velvet was fairly licking his thin lips. The third man just kept his gun pointed at my head.

“Three to one, Nick? It hardly seems enough.”

“Eddie, this was one hunch of mine that paid off. I was wondering what held Dolly up. Frisk him, Velvet.”

Dolly was blubbering in Nick’s arms. “Oh, Nickie, he hit me an’ he was asking me all kinds of questions!”

They were all in front of me now and Nick was glaring. His face was livid. “Rough stuff, is that it? You’re a little too free with your hands, Eddie. Go ahead. Velvet.”

I knew what was coming but I couldn’t get out of the way.

Velvet cackled and kneed me from behind. I doubled up and he came back with a bony fist that slammed me to the floor. I fell like a beat-up rug, the blood spinning in my head, red-hot rivets hammering away at the shoulder again. The floor swam in front of me. The point of something, it felt like Dolly Warren’s high-heeled weapon, dug into my side. I tasted blood again.

“Hold it,” Torrento’s voice sounded above me. “That’s enough for now.” Big Nick sounded far away. “Get some water, Dolly. I want to talk to him.”

Water exploded in my face. I opened my eyes. I raised myself to one knee, holding back a groan. I tried a grin through my split lips.

“You boys don’t really have to show me all this kindness,” I muttered. Velvet’s big hands helped me the rest of the way, shoving me roughly on to the divan.

Big Nick had one of his fat cigars going. His tiny eyes were shining with grudging admiration.

“You’re tough, Eddie. I’ll say that much for you. But I hate cops who get too close to me. Even ex-cops. Big Nick is paying for your last ride.”

“I figured that, Nick.”

Velvet suddenly looked surprised. “He’s got lead in him now, boss. The boys did better than they thought.”

“See, shamus?” Big Nick said. “Mess around us and you get hurt.”

Blood and pain made me hold my teeth together. “Mike Peters got hurt too, Nick.”

Torrento shook his thick head. “Got a one-track mind, you have. Yeah. Mike Peters. Your friend. He got close. Too close. So I pushed him out of the way. Dolly made that one easy. Once he caught her act, he was as good as dead.”

I felt the blood pound in my skull. My left arm was useless now. Like I’d slept on it all night. Only bitter hate kept me going. Hate and the picture of Peters lying in an alley with his face all caved in. That and this lovely, stupid wench who had led him on with a kiss and a promise.

“I got news for you, Nick.” It was my last card coming up. The only one left in a badly misplayed hand. “Mike died but he had his fun before he went.”

Torrento grunted, his eyes narrowing. Velvet growled.

“What does that mean?”

“Dolly let him have some fun. Her own brand, the brand you know so well. Mike went out the way every red-blooded guy would like to go when they die. One last fling with a beautiful broad. You know what I mean.”

I let that sink in, fighting to clear my head. Forcing a smile, I winked. That was too startling for their single-gauge intellects. Wounded, beaten men just don’t wink and joke. Especially a man who is about to die.

Dolly Warren paled. The color left her face with the enormity of the lie.

Nick Torrento scowled. “Say it in English, Noon.”

“Want me to use four-letter words in front of a lady? Mike and Dolly made love before he got killed—”

“Want Velvet to kiss you again, shamus?” Big Nick snarled. “Lay off that kind of talk! It won’t buy you a thing!”

“That’s just it, Nick. It won’t. So I’m telling you for nothing. Go ahead. Ask her yourself.”

Dolly Warren was no angel. But she was Nick Torrento’s girl. Big Nick was shrugging his shoulders in contempt, willing to let it go at that, but not Dolly. Her meal ticket and her well-being were on the line.

She forced her way between the guns and glared down at me. Her blue eyes had tiny specks in them. Red specks of uncontrollable anger.

“You cheap, no-good excuse for a man! Sayin’ things like that about me!” She moved in closer, her lithe body weaving in the evening gown. “I hope they cut out your rotten tongue. I want Nick to have your arms and legs pulled off, one by one! I want to see—”

It was what I had hoped for.

For split seconds she was between me and the guns in their hands. It was probably my last chance.

My foot came up with all the speed and force I could muster and everything I had left was wrapped up in it. With all the nerves and muscles in my body alive with pain, I rocketed her back the way she had come.

Dolly Warren’s surprise and fright made windmills of her arms. She flailed wildly at Velvet and the third gun in the room. Her sudden weight sent them spinning backward, their guns falling. Big Nick started forward with a hoarse shout of warning, one fat hand clawing for a weapon. But the hand I had damaged in the office was slow. I had time to recover.

I rolled to the carpet, my fingers closing fast on Velvet’s sleek-barreled .38. I came up with it, spitting fire and noise, feeling a mad wave of exultation surging over me.

Velvet had pulled another gun from his coat pocket but not in time. He made a face as my slug thudded into his chest, then his mouth sagged and he crumpled like wet newspaper to the floor. His crony scrambled desperately for the cover of the built-in bar. He had another gun now too. I could see it was my own .45.

Big Nick had grabbed Dolly Warren. She squirmed in his arms as his meaning got home to her. They reeled in a curious dance of self-preservation as the hood behind the bar opened fire.

A slug tore a hole in the floor near my thigh. I maneuvered behind the divan. The lights of the room were changing like kaleidoscopes in front of me. I fought to keep my head and eyes clear. I was close to blackout.

I could hear Dolly Warren screaming and kicking to get free of her bear-like captor.

The hood behind the bar didn’t see me prop myself on the arm of the divan, sight carefully and squeeze off three rounds. I raked the length of the bar. There was a strangled cry of surprise and a pair of trousered legs flopped into view from one corner of the thin-walled bar. I had estimated its solidity perfectly. The hood hadn’t. He joined Velvet in oblivion.

My eyes swung back to Dolly Warren and Nick Torrento.

Toward their struggling, contrasting figures, Dolly, beautiful in her strapless, skin-tight gown. Big Nick, massive and dark in his full dress clothes. I cocked the gun, ready for the slightest opening. It never came.

The hall door was swinging inward again.

There were men in plainclothes, a flash of blue uniforms. I staggered erect as I spotted Lieutenant Drum. But they had come too late, also. For somebody.

There was a roar and a shot. Dolly Warren and Nick Torrento broke apart like dancers who have reached the end of the waltz. A gun thudded to the floor in the sudden stillness. Big Nick Torrento stared at Dolly Warren foolishly, then looked down at the widening red stain on his white shirt front. He giggled. A short, bubbly giggle. Dolly Warren moaned.

Nick Torrento crawled to the floor suddenly and curled up in a bulky heap at her feet.

The whites of Dolly Warren’s eyes rolled up and her breath-taking figure sank down beside him. Then the shouting and movement started all over again. I heard Drum bellowing something.

That was all I saw because I fainted myself.

We were alone in Drum’s office when the red-headed lieutenant of detectives let me have it with official scorn.

“You ex-cops are all alike! Think you can handle everything by yourselves. Why the hell didn’t you tell our man Stone what you were up to? He’d been watching the dame’s place since Peters got it. Did you think the department was asleep on the job?”

I lifted the clean white sling on my arm. “This was personal, Red. I thought you’d understand.”

Drum’s face got redder than his hair. “Sure, I understand. I’ve got some friends too. But this was a police case. And there are police methods, in spite of your peculiar ideas on the subject. You should have known better. We had Torrento in mind too. Peters had been assigned to his policy racket to get the evidence that would put him where he belongs.”

I shook my head. “I wasn’t counting on Big Nick having time to use a smart lawyer. This was the only way, Red. I’m sorry Dolly Warren beat me to it.”

“Be glad she didn’t miss.” Drum pounded the desk. “I oughta grab your license for this. As a former cop you should have known better.”

I stood up. He had iced me good and I didn’t like it. “Is that all, lieutenant? My arm’s starting to bother me.”

Drum’s freckled face broke into an exasperated smile. “Ah, get the hell out of here. I never could talk any sense into you. Go ahead. Be a private cop. Use a gun to win your argument. But don’t expect any help from me.”

At the door I turned. I owed him an explanation.

“Red, I know vendettas went out with gaslights but this was one time I couldn’t turn the other cheek. If Big Nick was still alive, there’d still be a bullet for him. I don’t give a damn about your feelings or the department’s feelings, I’d still want to deliver it.”

Drum said nothing but his expression had softened. He reached into his desk drawer and came up with a bottle with a bright label. He drew two shot glasses from a cabinet behind him.

“You intellectual gunmen make me sick,” he said tiredly. “Come on back here, Ed. Let’s drink a toast. To a swell cop. Mike Peters, your friend, and mine.”