Zombie Pulp

11

The next day, after a sleepless night in which gaunt shadows reached out for me in the darkness, I did some checking. I went about it real casually. I had a photograph of Marianne Portis and I started showing it around very selectively.

About three, four hours later I struck gold.

I struck it with Louie Penachek, a degenerate gambler who was always into the loansharks for three or four figures. There wasn’t much he wouldn’t do for a buck. He was obsessed with the ponies. Sports betting. Card games. Any possible way he could wager on the outcome of something, he was into.

Barely five feet, slick as an oiled weasel, I found him out at the track, betting on the Danes. He was jumping up and down and screaming at the top of his lungs. By the time I’d reached him, he was leaning up against the railing, defeated.

He saw me, said by way of greeting, “Sonofabitch should’ve been a winner, Vince. It had all the markings. I had an inside tip on this one. Damn! Twenty clams down the old pisser.”

I flashed the cabbage at him: a couple fifties. “I need some info,” I told him. “You tell me what I want to hear, you got em.”

He licked his lips, looked like a sailor finally coming into port, catching his first glimpse of a cathouse. “Sure, sure, sure, Vince,” he said. “Ain’t much I don’t know about.”

I showed him the picture of Marianne.

His face dropped like mercury on a cold day. “No, no, no.” He held his hands up. “I can’t get involved in that. How would it look?” Then he looked at the bills again. “That’s some rich gravy.” He licked his lips again. “All right, goddammit, you bastard, Vince, you asked for it.”

And he told me.