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I Like ’Em Tough

Ed McBain writing as Curt Cannon

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Contents

Die Hard

Dead Men Don’t Dream

Now Die In It

Good and Dead

The Death of Me

Deadlier Than the Mail

About the Author

Die Hard

The bar was the kind of dimly lit outhouse you find in any run-down neighborhood, except that it was a little more ragged around the edges. There were blue and white streamers crowding the ceiling, arranged in a criss-cross pattern strung up in celebration of some local hero’s return a long time ago. The mirror behind the bar was cracked, and it lifted one half of my face higher than the other. A little to the right of the bar was a door with a sign that cutely said, Little Boys. The odor seeping through the woodwork wasn’t half as cute.

A few stumblebums were spilled over the tables in the joint like a troupe of marionettes with cut strings. I was the only guy standing besides the bartender, and if events followed their customary pattern, I wouldn’t be standing long. That’s the beauty of a perpetual bender. You know just when you’ve had all that you can hold, and you go on from there.

I lifted the shot glass from the bar, and went on from there. When I put the glass down, he was standing by my elbow, a hopeful expression on his face.

“Mr. Cannon?” he asked.

He was a little man with a little voice, one of the many stamped from the mold, one of those subway-strappers. He had a round face with a long nose that tried its damnedest to peer into his mouth. His lips were thin and narrow, and his eyes were carrying luggage, heavy luggage.

“Yeah,” I said, “I’m Cannon.”

He hesitated, looking over his shoulder, and then fastened two pale blue eyes on my face. “I … I understand you’re a private detective,” he said.

I turned my back to him and studied the empty shot glass. “You understand wrong, mister,” I said.

“I need help,” he went on, “for my son. My son.”

“I’m not a detective,” I told him, my voice rising slightly. I signaled for the bartender, and he nodded at me from the other end of the bar. The small man moved closer to me.

“My son,” he said. “He’s an addict.”

“That’s too bad,” I told him, my voice tired.

“I want you to stop them, the ones who made him that way, the ones who keep giving him that … that … filth!”

“You’re asking me to stop the tide, mister,” I said. “I couldn’t do that if I wanted to. And I don’t want to. Leave me alone, will you?”

“Please,” he said. “I …”

“Look, mister, I’m not interested. Shove off. Blow.”

His eyes slitted, and for just one moment the small man became a big man, an outraged man. “What kind of person are you, anyway?” he asked. His voice was thin and tight. “I need your help. I come to you for help. I need you, do you understand?”

The effort seemed to weaken him. He slumped against the bar, pulling a soiled handkerchief from his hip pocket and wiping it across his forehead.

“I can’t help you,” I said, my voice a little gentler. I was wondering what the hell was keeping the bartender. “I’m not a private detective any more. My license has been revoked, understand? I can’t practice in this state any more.”

He stared at me, his head making little nodding movements. When I’d finished speaking, he said, “My son doesn’t know about licenses. He knows only the needle. To take the needle away, you don’t need a fancy piece of paper.”

“No,” I agreed. “You need a hell of a lot more than that.”

“You’ll help me then?”

“No!”

He seemed astonished. He opened his hands and his eyes simultaneously and asked, “But why? Why not? Why can’t …”

I banged my glass on the bar and yelled, “Hey, bartender, what the hell are you doing, fermenting it?” I turned to face the little man fully then, and my voice was very low when I spoke. “Mister,” I said, “you’re wasting your time. I’m not interested, don’t you see? Not in your son, or anybody’s son. Not even in my own mother’s son. Please understand and just leave me alone. Go back to your nice little apartment and get the hell out of this cruddy dive. Just go. Do me a favor. Go.”

All color drained out of his face. His head pulled in like a turtle’s and he murmured, “It’s no use, then. No use.” He turned and headed for the door just as the bartender ambled over.

“Give me another of the same,” I said. I didn’t watch the little man leave. I watched the bartender instead, and I watched the way the whisky spilled from the neck of the bottle over the lip of the glass.

The pistol shots were rapid and short. Two in a row. Two short cracks like the beat of a stick against a snare drum rim. I lifted my head and turned it toward the door just in time to see the small man reach out for the door-jamb. He fell against his own hand and began dropping toward the floor slowly, like a blob of butter sliding down a knife. A streak of crimson followed his body down the length of the jamb, and then he collapsed on the floor in a lifeless little ball.

I ran over to the door and threw it wide. The street outside was dark, covered with a filmy rain slick, dimly lighted by a solitary lamppost on the corner. I could hear the staccato click of heels running against asphalt, dying out against the blackness of the city.

I turned back to the small man. The bartender was already leaning over him. “You know him?” he asked.

“No.”

“Looks to me like you knew him.”

I reached up and grabbed the front of the bartender’s shirt, twisting it in my fist. “I said I don’t know him. Just remember that. When the cops crawl out of the woodwork, just remember I never saw this guy in my life.” I pulled his face down to mine. “Remember?”

“I’ll remember,” he said.

“Good. Go mix a Pink Lady or something.” I shoved him away from me and he walked back to the bar, a sulky look on his face.

I felt for a pulse, knowing damn well I wouldn’t find one. I took out the small man’s wallet then, and found a driver’s license made out to Peter D’Allessio. I memorized his address, then put the license back into the wallet. I turned the plastic leaves, saw several pictures of a nice-looking kid with a prominent nose and light-colored eyes. D’Allessio’s son, I figured. The addict. He didn’t look like an addict. He had a full face and a big smile spread over it. His teeth were strong and even. I snapped the wallet shut and put it back into D’Allessio’s pocket, even though he wouldn’t be needing anything in that wallet again.

I passed the bartender and went straight to the phone. I dropped a dime in and then dialed the big O for Operator.

“Your call, please,” she said in a crisp voice.

“Give me the police.”

“Do you wish to report a crime?”

“No, a strawberry festival.”

“What?”

“For Pete’s sake, get me the police.”

I sat in the booth until a tired voice said, “Twelfth Precinct, Cassidy.”

“I want to report a murder.”

His voice got businesslike. “Where?”

I told him.

“Did you witness it?”

“No. I saw the guy die, but I didn’t see who did it.”

“May I have your name, sir?”

“No,” I said, and hung up.

That was that. My hands were washed. I left the booth and walked straight out of the bar, not looking down at D’Allessio. It was dark in the street, and I hesitated for a moment; wondering where to go now, wondering what to do next. Another bar? Sure, why not? I started walking, and I could hear the moan of the police sirens in the distance as they closed in on the remains of a little man who’d had a big problem.

She found me at my hotel the next morning.

I was lying there with the sheet pulled over my face when the knock sounded on the door.

“Who is it?” I called, the effort starting the little hammers going inside my head. I tried sitting up.

“You don’t know me.”

“What do you want, then?”

“I want to talk to you.”

I shrugged and called, “It should be open. Walk in.”

She stepped into the room, closing the door behind her. She was small and dark, with her hair pulled tight against the side of her face and caught in a pony tail at the back of her neck. Her face was a narrow oval that framed deep brown eyes and a straight nose. Her lips were well shaped. She wore a white blouse open at the throat, revealing the firm, subtle rise of the young breasts that filled out the blouse.

“Mr. Cannon?” she asked.

“What do you want?”

“I want to talk to you about Jerry D’Allessio.”

“Oh, nuts.”

“Did I say something wrong?”

“Sister, call off the hounds. First the old man and now …”

She moved across the room and stopped near the bed. “Was Mr. D’Allessio … did he contact you, too?”

“He did. He did that.”

“He’s dead. You know he’s dead?”

“I know.”

“They did it, Mr. Cannon. They knew he was trying to do something about Jerry. They wanted to shut him up.”

“They shut him up fine,” I said. I rubbed a hand over the bristle on my chin. “Listen, who’s giving me free publicity? Who’s parking you people on my doorstep? I’m curious.”

Her eyes were serious when she answered, “Everybody knows about you, Mr. Cannon.”

“Then you also know I’m no longer practicing. I’m out of business. We held the clearance sale a long while back.”

“You’re talking about your wife, aren’t you?”

It startled me. It startled the hell out of me because she said it so calmly and because it split a raw wound wide open.

“I think you’d better get the hell out of here,” I said.

“It’s no secret, so there’s nothing to hide,” she went on. “It was in all the papers.”

“Are you leaving or do you get kicked out on your can?”

Her eyes leveled on mine, and she said, “Don’t play it hard, Cannon. I don’t scare.”

“Look …”

“So your wife was playing around,” she said sharply. “So what? You should live in our neighborhood. The wives who don’t play around are either crippled or dead.”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” I said. I was beginning to tense up. I was beginning to want to smash things.

“He deserved everything you gave him,” she said. “He deserved the beating.”

“Thanks. The police didn’t quite see it your way.”

“You shouldn’t have used the end of a forty-five. You should have …”

“Little girl,” I said, “blow. I don’t like rehashing dead cases.”

“You died with the case, brave man,” she said. “You died when they snatched your license.”

“Listen …”

“What’d you expect? A gold star?” She was standing close to the bed now, her lips skinned back. “What makes a private eye think he’s got rights an ordinary citizen hasn’t? Assault with a deadly weapon, wasn’t it?”

“She was a tramp,” I blurted, “and he was a punk. I should have killed him. I should have killed the louse. I should have …”

She was taunting me now, her hands on her hips, her chest thrust out. “You couldn’t kill a corpse,” she said. “You couldn’t …”

I lashed out with the open palm of my right hand, catching her on the side of her jaw. The blow knocked her halfway across the room, but she came back like a wildcat, leaping onto the bed, her fingernails raking the length of my arm.

I was sore. I was good and sore. She was something to smash, and she had started it all. She was wriggling and squirming under my grip. She kicked out and her skirt rode up over her thighs, exposing a cool white expanse of flesh. The sheet slid down over my knees and I threw her flat on her back and rammed my lips against hers, hard. My hands fumbled with her blouse and then gradually her lips came alive under mine and she stopped struggling.

She’d brought it all back, every bit of it. She’d brought back the picture of Toni with her blonde hair cascading down her back, her laughing mouth, her deep eyes, green like a jungle glade. Four months of marriage, and then Parker. I should have used the business end on him. I should have squeezed the trigger and kept squeezing until he was just a dirty smear on the rug.

I was trembling with fury now, and I took it out on her. She moaned softly, her arms tight around my neck, yielding to me, her eyes smoky, her lips swollen. She screamed, and the scream was loud in the sun-filtered room. She screamed again and again, and I wanted to scream with her.

And then it was quiet, and she lay back against the pillows, her face flushed, her skirt crumpled around her thighs.

“Will you find Jerry?” she said at last.

“I’ll think about it.”

“What does that mean?”

“Just what it sounded like. I’ll think about it.”

“All right.” She pulled her skirt, down and then stood up, smoothing out her hair. “I’ll go. I’ll go while you think.”

“Sure.”

She walked toward the door and turned with her hand on the knob. “Think hard, Cannon,” she said.

Then she was gone.

I thought of her and of the fury that had been her body, and she got all mixed up with Toni in my mind. I began to tremble again, the way I always did when I thought of Toni and that night long ago. In my own goddam bedroom, like a two-bit floozie with some bum she’d picked up, his, hands roaming over her skin, his mouth buried in her throat, his …

I slammed my fist into the open palm of my other hand.

This was no good. It was over and done with. They’d dropped charges, but the police felt I wasn’t worthy of keeping a license.

Where were they now? Mexico for the divorce, and then where? Who cares, I told myself, who cares about it?

I knew who cared.

The guy who bathed every night in enough alcohol to float the Missouri. Straight down the gullet, eating a hole in my stomach, but never eating away the scar on my heart.

I rubbed my face with my hand, trying to blot out the memories. The girl hadn’t helped. She hadn’t helped at all. She’d made it only worse, the way they all did, all of them after Toni. I found a half-dead soldier in the drawer of the night stand and I poured a stiff one.

I wondered what D’Allessio was addicted to.

Forget it, I said to myself. Who cares?

I took another drink, and I thought of the kid again, and then I took another. And another. Things were getting nice and fuzzy, and a little bit warm. The pain was going away, and I felt a big-brother feeling for a kid I’d never met, a kid who bore a cross just like mine. Except his cross had thorns, and they probably stuck into his arms at four-hour intervals.

I got up and put on my jacket, and I headed for the address that had been on Peter D’Allessio’s driver’s license.

The address I’d memorized belonged to a gray building that poked at the sky like a blackened finger. A blonde sat on the front stoop, rocking a baby carriage. She looked me over when I started up the steps, her face showing disappointment.

I didn’t smile. I knew what I looked like, but I didn’t give a damn. She took me in for another minute, her gaze shifting from my bloodshot eyes to the stubble on my chin. Her eyes passed over my rumpled suit, and then she turned back to rocking the carriage with a vengeance.

I lit a match in the hallway and found D’Allessio on a mailbox whose front had been pushed in. Three-B, the box said. I started up the steps, holding my breath against the stale odors that crawled out of the woodwork.

On the third floor, I stopped in front of 3B and knocked on the door.

I listened as a pair of bare feet shuffled to the doorway. The door swung wide, and a thin girl in a faded wrapper stood silhouetted against the sunlight that streamed through the window at the other end of the kitchen.

“Well,” she said, “who are you?”

“Curt Cannon. Who are you?”

She smiled the oldest smile in the world and said, “What difference does it make? Who sent you up?”

“Where’s Jerry D’Allessio?” I asked.

She shrugged. “Hopped to the ears, probably. Who cares?”

“I care. Who are you, baby?”

“Let’s say I’m his cousin Marie. Why do you want him?”

“Does he live here?”

“Yeah, him and the old man. ’Cept the old man is dead, and Jerry never comes home. You ain’t a cop, are you?” She looked at me hard. “No, you couldn’t be a cop.”

“No, I couldn’t. Where does Jerry usually hang out?”

“Wherever there’s H, you’ll find Jerry. Sniff out the hoss, and you’ll find Jerry standing there with his spoon. You could use a shave, you know.”

“I know.”

She looked at me again and said, “You might look for Claire Blaney. Later. She knows Jerry.”

“A small, dark girl?”

“Small? Dark? Oh, you’re thinking of Edith Rossi. No, I mean Claire. She’s something else.”

“How do you mean?”

“Edith and Jerry were engaged.”

“Were?”

“Yeah, no more.”

“Why not?”

“Were you ever engaged to a junkie, mister? It’s no picnic. Maybe Edith got tired of the things she had to do to get money for him. Maybe she had it right up to here.”

“Why does she want to help him, then?”

For a moment, the hard mask dropped from the girl’s face, and there was almost a tenderness about her tired eyes. “She remembers, I guess. She remembers sometimes what Jerry used to be like. I guess that’s it.”

“Thanks,” I said. “Thanks for the information.”

“Hey, you leaving?”

“Yep.”

“Ain’t you stayin’ for the ball?”

“What ball?”

“We could build a real ball, mister. Just shave, that’s all.”

I looked at her, my face expressionless. “Thanks,” I said. “The beard keeps me warm.”

I left her standing in the doorway, a puzzled look on her face. When I reached the street, I glanced down at the blonde. She didn’t look up this time. I walked past her and headed for the nearest candy store. I squeezed up to the counter and ordered an egg cream.

A pimply faced clerk nodded and began mixing it, going very light on the milk. He shoved it across the counter at me and I tasted it. I wasn’t used to egg creams.

“What’s the matter?” he asked. “No good?”

“Fine,” I said. I looked at him hard and added, “The monkey don’t like it, that’s all.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Weighs fifteen pounds, that goddam monkey, and he’s scratching away at my shoulder.”

“Yeah?”

“I’d sure like to get rid of it,” I said, watching his eyes.

“Try the Bronx Zoo,” he answered.

“I tried them. They feed their monkey bananas.”

The clerk didn’t bat an eye. He kept staring at me, and then he said, “There’s another zoo in Central Park, mister.”

“This monkey, chum, he’s scratching hell out of …”

“You’re barking up the wrong tree, mister,” the clerk said.

“Where’s the right tree?”

He blinked once. “Ask your monkey,” he said.

He turned his back and walked down to the other end of the counter. When he came back, he had a match stuck between his teeth and he chewed on it as if it were a licorice stick. I tried a new question.

“Where do I find Claire Blaney?”

He looked at me hard, the matchstick unwavering. “You a bull?”

“Don’t make me sick.”

“The red building on the corner.” He studied me again. “You can’t miss it. She’s on the sixth floor. Blaney Claire Blaney.”

“Thanks,” I said.

He nodded. “She ain’t gonna help your monkey none, mister.”

“No?”

“No.” He grinned, exposing yellowed teeth. “She’s got one of her own.”

I paid him and left. The red building was easy to find.

I rapped on the door twice with my knuckles, peering at the numerals in the dimness of the hallway. The door opened quickly, and the girl standing there almost fell out into the hall.

“Oh,” she said. She put her hand to her mouth. “What is it?”

“Miss Blaney?”

“Yes. Yes, I’m Miss Blaney.” Her voice was hurried, and she kept looking past me down the hallway.

“May I come in?”

“What for? I mean, what do you want?”

“I want to talk about Jerry.”

“Oh.” She put her hand to her mouth again, and then brushed a wisp of red hair off her forehead. “Jerry. Yes, come in. Come in.”

The apartment was a shambles. Dishes were piled in the sink, and empty beer bottles cluttered the floor. The shades were drawn against the sun, and the bed at the far end of the room was unmade.

Claire Blaney glanced at the mess, and then pulled her faded silk robe tighter around her waist. She was a tall-girl, with fiery red hair crowning her head, and arching eyebrows against a high forehead. Her deep-set green eyes were darting nervously, the way an addict’s eyes will, never focusing on anything. Her slim shoulders dropped down to full, rounded breasts that moved gently when she walked, nudging the thin fabric of her robe. She had wide hips and long tapering legs. The robe was an old one, a little too short, ending just above the knee. It was tied at the waist with a dirty cord. Nothing else held it closed.

She took a cigarette from a crumpled package on the table, smoothed it out with her fingers and then thrust it between her lips. She wore no make-up, and her lips were pale and full, dry after a night’s sleep. Her fingers trembled when she lit the cigarette.

“What about Jerry?” she asked.

“Where is he?”

“I don’t know. Listen, are you going to ask me questions? If you’re going to ask me questions, you can leave right now. I’m expecting someone.”

“Jerry?”

“No.”

“Who?”

“Someone.”

“The Man?” I asked.

Her eyes opened wide. “What?”

“Honey, I’ve seen enough to know someone who’s waiting for The Man. You haven’t had your shot yet, have you?”

“Nobody asked you.”

“When’s he coming?”

She glanced at the clock on the wall. “He should have been here already. Damn it, where is he?”

She began to pace the room, her shoulders straight, her breasts moving rhythmically from side to side with each step she took.

“Why was Peter D’Allessio rubbed?” I asked.

“How the hell should I know?… Are you a cop?”

“No.”

“How the hell should I know?” she repeated.

“What’s Jerry got himself into?”

“What do you mean?”

“Nobody rubs a junkie’s father just because he’s going to the police. One junkie more or less doesn’t mean beans to a pusher.”

“So?”

“So why? Why kill the old man? I keep asking myself that.”

“Go find out if you’re so damned interested.” She looked up at the clock again. “Where the hell is he?”

“He’ll be here. Relax.”

“He’d better be here. He’d better be here damn soon. Man, I’m overdue.”

She crossed to the table and leaned over to put out her cigarette. Then she began pacing again. It was beginning to eat at her. It was beginning to get under her skin and crawl in her blood. I could see a fine film of sweat on her forehead. Her hands were really shaking now, and she kept pulling at the robe. She scratched at her head, then raked her long nails over the skin on her arms. She bit her lips, glanced at the clock again.

“Jeez, what’s keeping him? What’s keeping him?”

She walked to the bed and sat down. She got up almost instantly and began walking again. I watched her shivering violently, her teeth chattering now, her face looking as if it were ready to fall apart.

“Easy,” I said. “Easy.”

“Get out of here,” she shrieked. “I won’t have you watching me.”

“Easy,” I told her.

She walked to the table and reached into the crumpled pack for another cigarette. The pack was empty and she threw it away. I took out a cigarette and offered it to her. Greedily, she snatched at it, and I lit it for her while she continued to shiver.

She turned away suddenly and said, “I’m itchy. I’m itchy all over. Like bugs were on me. All over, crawling all over me.”

She unloosened the cord, at her waist and threw the robe open, exposing her hard, flat stomach, and the curving whiteness of her hips and thighs. She didn’t care about me now. She only cared about the monkey who was tearing her shoulder to shreds. She ran to the bed and yelled, “God, God!” throwing herself forward onto the mattress. She wriggled frantically and her back arched high into the air, her leg muscles straining. She subsided in a sobbing heap and shouted, “Where is he? Where is he?”

Her back arched again, her breasts high, every muscle in her body quivering with the longing for the drug.

“Come here,” she pleaded. “Do something. Do something for me. Do something. Do something.”

I walked to the bed and stroked her body gently. She trembled violently, her breath raging into her lungs.

“Do something! Do something! Please, please, please.”

I slapped her across the face. “Snap out of it,” I said.

“Again, again. Hit me again. Please, please.”

I hit her harder this time, and she moaned softly and reached up, throwing her arms around my neck. Her teeth clamped onto my neck, and she became a writhing, wriggling animal, her screams tearing across the room. I shoved her away and she flopped back onto the mattress, her eyes wide.

Nothing can help a junkie but the junk.

When I left her, she was still moaning on the bed, still crying for The Man who could put her out of her misery. On the way down, I passed a short, dark guy in a loud sports shirt, a package under his arm.

“You’d better hurry,” I told him. “You’re about to lose a customer.”

He grunted and kept walking up the steps, looking back once to study my face more closely. I studied his face, too, and then I walked down to the ground floor. Instead of going out of the building, I went behind the steps and sat on one of the garbage cans there.

I waited for about fifteen minutes, and then I heard light steps coming down the stairs. When the steps reached the ground floor, I peeked out and saw the loud sports shirt drifting toward the front door. I gave him a chance to reach the street, and then I started after him.

With that shirt, you could have tailed him in a snowstorm. It was yellow and green, and it stood out like a beacon for foundering ships. I kept walking after him, quickening my pace when he did, never taking my eyes from the shirt. He turned a corner after we’d walked three blocks, and I ran to the corner anxious not to lose him. I rounded the corner at a trot and walked right into the business end of a Colt .38.

“What is it, chum?” he asked. He had a thin, suspicious face with heavy brows and dark brown eyes. He sported a little mustache under his nose, and his teeth protruded over his lower lip.

“Put up the artillery,” I said. “This is a friendly visit.”

“I ain’t got no friends, chum,” he told me.

“Claire Blaney’s one of your friends, isn’t she?”

He kept the .38 leveled at my stomach. “What if she is a friend?”

“Is Jerry D’Allessio a friend, too?”

“What’s your game, chum?”

“I want to know who killed Peter D’Allessio.”

“Why?”

“I just want to know.”

He pointed the gun downward suggestively. “You want to keep that, you better get the hell out of this neighborhood.”

“That right?”

“That’s right, chum.”

I nodded. “Okay. Suits me fine.” I started to turn away from him, and then I brought my right fist around in a short chop to his gut. He was about to trigger off a shot when I brought the edge of my left hand down on his wrist. He bellowed and dropped the gun, and I kicked it clattering across the sidewalk. I grabbed him then and gave him another hard right on his shoulder, bringing the hard edge of my hand down like a knife. He brought his shoulder up in pain, and his face screwed up into a tight knot.

“Where’s Jerry?” I asked.

“I don’t know.”

I backhanded him across the mouth, and a spurt of blood appeared at the corner of his lips. “Junior, I’m not kidding. I almost killed a lot of guys, and I’m ready to go all the way with you. Where is he?”

“Wise up. I don’t know.”

“I’ll wise up,” I told him. I slapped him again, harder. “Where is he?”

“So help me, I don’t know.”

This time I gave him my fist, square in his mouth. He was spitting teeth when he finally decided to talk.

“All right, all right, I’ll show you.”

“This better be straight goods.”

“The goods,” he said. “The goods. Honest.”

I picked his .38 out of the gutter and tucked it into my waistband. I shoved him ahead of me, and then we started out to find the junkie whose father had died.

The sports shirt left me outside a small door in a narrow alley. He pointed to the door, and then he took off like a big bird, his mouth still bleeding.

I lifted my hand and rapped on the door.

There was no sound inside, no light.

I tapped again.

“Yes, who is it?” a voice whispered.

“A visitor.”

“Go away.”

“Open up, D’Allessio,” I said.

“Go away, damn it.”

“You want it broken in?”

“Yeah, break it in. Go ahead, break it in.”

I backed up to the opposite wall of the alley and shoved the sole of my foot against it. When my shoulder hit the door, it splintered with a rushing crack of old wood, and I stumbled into the room, fighting for balance.

I felt around for a light switch, finally located a pull chain. I yanked it, and a dim bulb splashed some feeble light into the small room.

D’Allessio was curled up against the wall, on the bed.

This wasn’t the D’Allessio I’d seen in the wallet. The same long nose was there, and the same pale eyes—but the face was thin, the skin pulled in tight under his cheekbones. His lips were bloodless, and his exposed arms bore the telltale scars of thousands of injections.

It was his eyes that told the whole story, though. They blinked like blind whirlpools in his head, the pupils large and black and staring. Haunted eyes. Eyes possessed of a ghost, a ghost named heroin.

“D’Allessio?” I asked.

“Who’s the strong man? Who’s the man goes around breaking doors?”

“Curt Cannon,” I told him.

“Curt Cannon.” He gave a low chuckle that died in his throat. “The disillusioned peeper.” He chuckled again, huddled against the wall like a skinny pack rat.

“Your father wanted me to find you,” I said. “That was before someone killed him.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. He wanted me to find you so he could take you off the stuff. Your father had pipe dreams.”

“Don’t I know it!” He chuckled again, his teeth flashing in his gaunt face. “Shake the monkey? Like fun. Lexington, he said. Lexington, Kentucky. Man, he had rocks. That goddam penal colony?”

“They cure people there,” I said.

“Sure, criminals. I’m no criminal.”

“You are now,” I said.

“What?”

“He was only trying to help you, Jerry. You had no reason to shoot him.”

D’Allessio sat up on the bed, and his eyes were wider now, still staring, still lifeless. “You’re off your rocker,” he said.

“Who else? Cousin Marie? She’s too busy. Claire? For what purpose Hoss is everything to her, the way it is to you. Edith Rossi? She was trying to help you, and she knew your father was doing the same thing.”

“You’ve flipped your cork, Cannon. Go break your way out of here. I’m sleepy.”

“I thought maybe the pushers did it, but what for? You’re dirt to them, Jerry. Dirt under their feet. Your father was a danger to only one person—the person he might’ve told the police about when I wouldn’t help. You.”

The gun came up from beneath the pillow before I could reach for the .38 in my waistband. D’Allessio held it steady, and he grinned over it, still lying full length on on the bed.

When he spoke, he spoke slowly, separating the two words. “So what?” he said.

“So nothing. Your father’s going to cure you after all, Jerry. There’s no better cure than the electric chair. That’s the only permanent cure.”

“And who’s going to take me to the chair?” he asked.

“Me.”

“Ha. Joke.”

“Sure,” I said, “me. I’m going to take that gun away from you in about three seconds, and then I’m going to make a citizen’s arrest and cart you down to Homicide Me.”

“You must be tired of living,” he said.

“That’s it, friend, that’s it exactly. I just don’t give a damn, you see. You can shoot me but you’ll get it anyway, and if you kill me, you’ll be doing me a favor. Like a mutual friend said, I died a long time ago.” I took a step closer to the bed. “Give me the gun, kid.”

“Stay where you are,” he shouted. He was sitting up now, his trousers rumpled over his knees, the needle marks showing on his legs, too, marks he’d killed to keep.

I walked up to the bed, holding out my hand.

His eyes were wide with fear, and his hand began to tremble. I watched the trigger finger, watched the skin grow white on his knuckle as the finger tightened.

“Give it to me!” I shouted.

For a second, I thought he was going to, shoot. And then he threw himself full length on the bed, the gun clattering to the floor. He began crying, the sobs ripping into his chest.

“I’m no good. I’m no damn good,” he said.

“You just took the wrong trolley, kid.”

“My own father, my own father. I’m no good.”

“Come on, kid,” I said. “Come on.”

He was still crying when I led him, out of that dark alley into the sunshine that spilled onto the pavement. He didn’t say a word when the Homicide boys took over. I gave them his gun and told them Ballistics would probably match the bullets in it with the ones found in Peter D’Allessio’s body.

I didn’t wait for thanks. I headed for the nearest bar.

I sat and drank, and I thought of the kid and whatever ghost had driven him to drugs and the murder of his own father. The ghost would stay with him right to the end. Ghosts die hard. I know all about ghosts.

I lifted my glass and I drank.

Dead Men Don’t Dream

The old neighborhood hadn’t changed much. I was standing near the window in Charlie Dagerra’s bedroom looking out at the tenements stretched across the cold winter sky like a gray smear. There was no sun. The day was cold and gloomy and somehow forbidding, and that was as it should be because Charlie Dagerra lay in a casket in the living room.

The undertaker had skillfully adjusted Charlie’s collar so that most of the knife slash across his neck was covered. He’d disguised the rest with heavy make-up and soft lights, but everyone knew what lay under the make-up. Everyone knew, and no one was talking about it.

They passed the bottle, and I poured myself a stiff hooker. Charlie and I had been kids together, hitching rides on the trolley that used to run along First Avenue. That was a long time ago, though, and I hadn’t seen Charlie since long before I’d lost my license. I probably would never have seen Charlie again, dead or alive, if I hadn’t run into The Moose down on Fourteenth Street. He’d told me about Charlie, and asked me to come pay my respects. He didn’t mention the fact that I had a three-day growth on my face or that my eyes were rimmed with red. His glance had traveled briefly over my rumpled suit. He ignored all that and asked me to come pay my respects to a dead childhood friend, and I’d accepted.

“So how you been?” The Moose asked now. He was holding a shot glass between two thin fingers. The Moose is a very small man, his hair thinning in an oval on the back of his head. He’d been a small kid, too, which was why we tagged him with a virile nickname.

“So-so,” I told him. I tossed off the drink and held out my glass. One of Charlie’s relatives filled it, and I nodded my thanks.

“I read all about it in the paper,” The Moose said.

“Oh?”

“Yeah.” The Moose shook his head sadly. “She was a bitch, Curt,” he said. “You should have killed that guy.”

He was talking about my wife Toni. He was referring to the night I’d found her in my own bedroom, after four months of crazy-in-love marriage, with a son of a bitch named Parker. He was recalling the vivid newspaper accounts of how I’d worked Parker over with the butt end of my .45, of how the police had tagged me with an ADW charge—assault with a deadly weapon. They’d gotten my license, and Parker had gotten my wife, but not until I’d ripped a trench down the side of his face and knocked half his goddam teeth out.

“You should have killed him,” The Moose repeated.

“I tried to, Moose. I tried damn hard.” I didn’t like remembering it. I’d been putting in a lot of time forgetting. Whisky helps in that category.

“The good ones die,” he said, shaking his head, “and the bad ones keep living.” He looked toward the living room, where the flowers were stacked on either side of the coffin. I looked there, too, and I saw Charlie’s mother weeping softly, a big Italian woman in a black dress.

“What happened?” I asked. “Who gave Charlie the knife slash?”

The Moose kept nodding his head as if he hadn’t heard me. I looked at him over the edge of my glass, and finally his eyes met mine. They were veiled, clouded with something nameless.

“What happened?” I asked again.

The Moose blinked, and I knew what the something nameless was then. Fear. Cold, stark, unreasoning fear.

“I don’t know,” he said. “They found him outside his store. He ran a tailor shop, you know. You remember Charlie’s father, don’t you, Curt? Old Joe Dagerra? When Joe died, Charlie took over the shop.”

“Yeah,” I said. The whisky was running out, and the tears were running in all over the place. It was time to go. “Moose,” I said, “I got to be running. I want to say good-by to the old lady, and then I’ll be …”

“Sure, Curt. Thanks for coming up. Charlie would have appreciated it.”

I left The Moose in the bedroom and said good-by to Mrs. Dagerra. She didn’t remember me, of course, but she took my hand and held it tightly. I was a friend of her dead son, and she wanted to hold everything he’d known and loved for as long as she could. I stopped by the coffin, knelt, and wished Charlie well. He’d never harmed a fly as far as I could remember, and he deserved a soft journey and maybe a harp and a halo or whatever they gave them nowadays.

I got to my feet and walked to the door, and another of Charlie’s relatives said, “He looks like he’s sleeping, doesn’t he?”

I looked at the coffin and at the red, stitched gash on Charlie’s neck where it was already beginning to show through the make-up. I felt sick all of a sudden. “No,” I said harshly. “He looks dead.”

Then I went downstairs.

The neighborhood looked almost the same, but not quite. There was still the candy store huddling close to the building on the left, and the bicycle rental shop on the right. The iceman’s wagon was parked in the gutter, and I remembered the time I’d nearly smashed my hand fooling with the wagon, tilting it until a sliding piece of ice sent the wagon veering to the gutter, pinning my hand under the handle. I’d lost a nail, and it had been tragic at the time. It got a smile from me now. The big white apartment house was across the street, looking worn and a little tired now. The neighborhood had changed from Italian-Irish to Italian-Irish-Puerto Rican. It was the same neighborhood, but different.

I shrugged and walked into the candy store. The guy behind the counter looked up when I came in, squinting at my unfamiliar face.

“Pall Mall,” I said. I fished in my pocket for change, and his eyes kept studying me, looking over my clothes and my face. I knew I was no Mona Lisa, but I didn’t like the guy’s scrutiny.

“What’s with you?” I snapped.

“Huh? I …”

“Give me the goddam cigarettes and cut the third degree.”

“Yes, sir. I … I’m sorry, sir.”

I looked into his eyes and saw the same fear that had been on Moose’s face. And then I recalled that the guy had just called me “sir.” Now who the hell would call a bum “sir”? He put the cigarettes on the counter and I shoved a fifty-cent piece at him. He smiled thinly and pushed the coin back at me. I looked at it and back into his eyes. In the days when I’d been a licensed private eye, I’d seen fear on a lot of faces. I got so I could smell fear. I could smell it now, and the odor was overpowering.

I pushed the fifty-cent piece across the counter once more and said, “My change, mac.”

The guy picked up the money quickly, rang it up, and gave me my change. He was sweating now. I shrugged, shook my head, and walked out of the store.

Well, Cannon, I told myself, where now?

“Curt?”

The voice was soft, inquisitive. I turned and found its owner. She was soft, too, bundled into a thin coat that swelled out over the curves of her body. Her hair was black, as black as night, and it curled against the oval of her face in soft wisps that didn’t come from a home permanent kit. Her eyes were brown, and wide; her lips looked as if they’d never been kissed—but wanted to be.

“I don’t think I know you,” I said.

“Kit,” she said. “Kit O’Donnell.”

I stared at her hard. “Kit O’Donn …” I took another look. “Not Katie O’Donnell? I’ll be damned.”

“Have you got a moment, Curt?”

I still couldn’t get over it. She’d been a dirty faced kid when last I’d seen her. “Sure,” I said. “Plenty of time. More than I need.”

“There’s a bar around the corner,” she said. “We can talk there.”

I grinned and pulled up the collar of my coat. “That’s just where I was heading anyway.”

The bar was like all bars—it had whisky and the people who drink whisky. It also had a pinball machine and two tables set against the long front window. We sat at one of the tables, and she shrugged out of her coat. She shrugged very nicely. She was wearing a green sweater and a loose bra, and when she shrugged I leaned closer to the table and the palms of my hands itched.

She didn’t bother with a preamble. “Curt,” she said, “my father is in trouble.”

“Well, I’m sorry to hear that,” I said.

“You’re a private detective. I’d like you to help.”

I grinned. “Katie … Kit … I’m not practicing any more. The Law took my ticket.”

“That doesn’t matter.”

“Oh, doesn’t it?”

“Curt, it’s the whole neighborhood, not just my father. Charlie … Charlie was one of them. He … they …”

She stopped talking, and her eyes opened wide. Her voice seemed to catch in her throat, and she lowered her head slightly. I turned and looked at the bar. A tall character in a belted camel’s-hair coat was leaning on the bar, a wide grin on his face. I stared at him and the grin got bigger. Briefly, I turned back to Kit. She raised her eyes, and I was treated to my third look at fear in the past half-hour.

“Now what the hell?” I said.

“Curt, please,” she whispered.

I shoved my chair back and walked toward the bar. The tall character kept grinning, as if he were getting a big kick out of watching a pretty girl with a stumblebum. He had blond hair and sharp blue eyes, and the collar of his coat was turned up in the back, partially framing his narrow face.

“Is something wrong, friend?” I asked.

He didn’t answer. He kept grinning, and I noticed that one hand was jammed into a pocket of the coat. There was a big lump in that jacket, and unless the guy had enormous hands, there was something besides the end of his arm there.

“You’re staring at my friend,” I said.

His eyes flicked from the swell of Kit’s breasts where they heaved in fright beneath the green sweater.

“So I am,” he said softly.

“So cut it out.”

The grin appeared on his face again. He turned his head deliberately, and his eyes stripped Kit’s sweater off. I grabbed the collar of his coat, wrapped my hand in it, and yanked him off the bar.

He moved faster than I thought he would. He brought up a knee that sent a sharp pain careening up from my groin. At the same time, his hand popped out of the pocket and a snub-nosed .38 stared up at my face.

I didn’t look at the gun long. There are times when you can play footsie, and there are times when you automatically sense that a man is dangerous and that a fisted gun isn’t a bluff but a threat that might explode any second. The knee in my groin had doubled me over so that my face was level with the .38. I started to lift my head, and I smashed my bunched fist sideways at the same time. I caught him on the inside of his wrist, and the gun jerked to one side, its blast loud in the small bar. I heard the front window shatter as the bullet struck it, and then I had his wrist tightly in my fingers, and I was turning around and pulling his arm over my shoulder. I gave him my hip, and he left his feet and yelped hoarsely.

And then he was in the air, flipping over my shoulder, with his gun still tight in my closed fist. My other hand was cupped under his elbow. He started coming down bottoms up and the gun blasted again, ripping up six inches of good floor. He started to swear and the swear erupted into a scream as he felt the bone in his arm splinter. I could have released my grip when I had him in the air. I could have just let him drop to the floor like an empty sack. Instead, I kept one hand on his wrist and the other under his elbow, and his weight pushed down against his stiffened arm.

The bone made a tiny snap, like someone clicking a pair of castanets. He dropped the gun and hit the floor with a solid thump that rattled some glasses on the bar. His hand went instantly to his arm, and his face turned gray when he saw the crooked dangle of it. The grayness turned to a heavy flush that mingled with raw pain. He dove headlong on the floor, reaching for the gun with his good arm.

I did two things, and I did them fast. I stepped on his hand first. I stepped on it so hard that I thought I heard some more bones crush. And then, while he was pulling his hand back in pain, I brought my foot back and let it loose in a sharp swing that brought my toe up against his jaw. His teeth banged together and he came up off the floor as if a grenade had exploded under him, collapsing against the wood flat on his face a second later.

“Get your broom,” I said to the bartender. I walked back to Kit and helped her on with her coat.

“Curt, you shouldn’t have,” she mumbled. “You shouldn’t have.”

“Let’s get out of here,” I said.

She huddled close against me in the street. A sharp wind had come up, and it drove the newspapers along in the gutter like sailboats in a furious hurricane. I kept my arm around her, and it felt good to hold a woman once more. Subconsciously my hand tightened and then started to drop. She reached up with one hand and pulled my fingers away, staring up into my face.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I sometimes forget.”

A sort of pity came into her eyes. “Where are you living now, Curt?” she asked.

“A charming little spot called The Monterey. It’s in the Bowery. I don’t suppose you’ve ever been there.”

“No. I …”

“Who was the joker?”

“What joker?”

“The one who’s picking up his arm.”

“His name’s Lew. He’s one of them. They’ve been … we’ve been paying them, Curt. All the storekeepers. My father with his grocery, and Charlie—everybody. That’s why he was killed. Charlie, I mean. And now my father, Curt, he’s refused to pay them any more. He told them they could … Curt, I’m frightened. That’s why I want your help.” It all came out in a rush, as if she were unloading a terrible burden.

“Honey,” I said, “I have no license. I told you before. I’m not a real eye any more. I’m more a … a glass eye. Do you understand?”

She turned her face toward mine. “You won’t help?”

“What could I do?”

“You could … scare them. You could make them afraid to take any more money.”

“Me?” I laughed out loud. “Who’d be afraid of me? Honest, Kit, I’m just a …”

“What do you want, Curt?” she asked. “I haven’t any money, but I’ll give you … whatever else you want.”

“What!”

“They’ll kill my father, Curt. As sure as we’re standing here, they’ll kill him. I’ll do anything.” She paused. “Anything you say.”

I grinned, but only a bit. “Do I look that way, Kit? Do I really look that way?”

She lifted her face, and her eyes were puzzled for a moment. I shook my head and left her standing there on the corner, with the wind whipping her coat around her long, curving legs.

I walked for a long while, past the public school, past the Latticini, past the bars and the coal joint and the butcher and all the places I’d known since I was old enough to crawl. I saw kids with glazed eyes and the heroin smell about them, and I saw young girls with full breasts in tight brassières. I saw old women shuffling along the streets with their heads bent against the wind, and old men puffing pipes in dingy doorways.

This was the beginning. Curt Cannon had started here. It had been a long way up out of the muck. I had had four men working for me in my agency. I had gone a long way from First Avenue. And here I was back again, back in the muck, only the muck was thicker, and it was contaminated with a bunch of punks who thought a .38 was a ticket on the gravy train. And guys like Charlie Dagerra got their throats slit for not liking the scheme of things.

Well, that was tough, but that wasn’t my problem. I had enough troubles of my own. Charlie Dagerra was dead, and the dead don’t dream. The living do. They dream a lot. And their dreams are full of blonde beauties with laughing eyes and mocking lips. And all the blondes are called Toni.

She startled me. She was almost like the dream come to life. I almost slammed into her, and I started to walk around her when she took a step to one side, blocking my path.

She had long blonde hair, and blue eyes that surveyed me speculatively now. Her mouth was twisted in a small grin, her lips swollen under their heavy lipstick. She wore a leather jacket, the collar turned up, and her hands were rammed into her pockets.

“Hello,” she said. Her voice rose on the last syllable and she kept staring at me. It was getting dark now, and the wind was brisk on the back of my neck. I looked at her and at the way her blonde hair slapped at her face.

“What do you want, sister?” I asked.

“It’s what you want that counts,” she said.

I looked her over again, starting with the slender, curving legs in the high heels, up the full rounded thighs that pressed against her skirt.

When my eyes met hers again, she looked at me frankly and honestly. “You like?”

“I like.”

“It’s cheap, mister. Real cheap.”

“How cheap?”

She hooked her arm through mine, pressing her breasts against my arm. “We’ll talk price later,” she said. “Come on.”

We began walking, and the wind started in earnest now, threatening to tear the gray structures from the sky.

“This way,” she said. We turned down 119th Street, and we walked halfway up the street toward Second Avenue. “This house,” she said. I didn’t answer. She went ahead of me, and I watched her hips swinging under her skirt, and I thought again of Toni, and the blood ran hotly in my veins.

She stepped into the dark vestibule of the house, and I walked in after her. She walked toward the end of the hall on the ground floor, and I realized too late that there were no apartments on that floor except at the front of the building. She swung around suddenly, thrusting a nickel-plated .22 at me, shoving me back against the garbage cans that were lined up underneath the stairway.

“What is this?” I asked. “Rape?”

“It’s rape, mister,” she answered. She flicked her head, lashing the blonde hair back over her shoulder. Her eyes narrowed and then she lifted the .22 and brought it down in a slashing arc that sent blood spurting from my cheek.

“This is for Lew,” she said. She brought the small gun back and down again, and this time I could feel the teeth rattling in my mouth. “And this is for Lew’s broken arm!”

The gun went back, slashing down in a glinting arc. I reached up and grabbed her wrist, pulling the gun all the way over to one side. With my other hand, I slapped her across the face. I tightened my grip on her wrist until she let the gun clatter onto the garbage cans, a small scream coming out of her mouth. I slapped her again, backhanded, and she flew up against the wall, her mouth open in surprise and terror.

“We came here for something,” I told her.

“You lousy son of a bitch. I wouldn’t if you were the last man on earth.”

I slapped her harder this time, and I pulled the zipper down on her leather jacket and ripped her blouse down the front. My fingers found her bra, and I tore it in two. I pulled her to me and mashed my mouth down against hers. She fought and pulled her mouth away, and I yanked her to me, my hand against her. She stopped struggling after a while.

The wind kept howling outside. I left her slumped against the wall. I threw a five-dollar bill into the garbage cans, and I said, “Tell Lew to keep his bait at home. I’ll break his other arm if he sends another slut after me. You understand?”

“You didn’t seem to mind, you bastard,” she mumbled.

“Just tell him. Just tell him what I said.”

I walked out of the building. I was sore, very sore. I didn’t like being suckered. I was ready to find this Lew character and really break his other arm. I was ready to rip it off and stuff it down his God-damned mouth. That’s the way I felt. The old neighborhood made it only tougher to bear. You go to a funeral, you don’t expect a boxing match. You don’t expect punks shaking down a poor neighborhood. It was like rattling pennies out of a gum machine. It was that cheap. It stank, and the smell made me sick, and I wanted to hold my nostrils.

I kept burning, and before I knew it, I was standing in front of O’Donnell’s grocery. I walked in when I spotted Kit behind the counter.

“I’ll take take six cans of beer,” I told her.

Her head jerked up when she heard my voice, “Curt,” she said, “one of them was just here!”

“What? Where is he?”

“He just left. He said we’d better have the money by tomorrow or …”

“Which way did he go?” I was halfway to the door.

“Toward Pleasant Avenue,” she said. “He was wearing a tan fedora and a green coat.”

I didn’t wait for more. I headed out of the store and started walking down toward Pleasant. I caught up with him about halfway down the block. He was big from the back, a tall guy with shoulders that stretched against the width of his coat. I walked up behind him and grabbed one arm, yanking it up behind his back.

“Hello,” I said. “My name is Curt Cannon.”

“Hey, man, you nuts or something?” He tried to pull his arm away but I held it tightly.

“Take me to the cheese,” I said. “The head punk.”

“Man, you’ve flipped,” he whined. I still couldn’t see his face, but it sounded like a kid talking, a big kid who’d once lifted weights.

“You want to carry your arm away?” I asked.

“Cool it, man. Cool it.” He tried to turn but I held him tightly. “What’s your gripe?” he asked at last.

“I don’t like shakedowns.”

“Who does? Man, we see eye to eye. Loosen the flipper.”

I yanked up on it and he screamed. “Cut the jive,” I shouted. “Take me to the son of a bitch behind all this or I’ll leave a stump on your shoulder.”

“Easy, easy, man. Easy. I’m walking. I’m walking.”

He kept walking toward Pleasant, and I stayed behind him, ready to tear his arm off if I had to.

“He ain’t gonna cut this nohow,” the weight-lifter said. “He ain’t gonna cut this at all.”

“He’s done enough cutting,” I said. “He cut Dagerra’s throat.”

“You don’t dig me, Joe,” the weight-lifter said. “You don’t dig me at all.”

“Just keep walking.”

He kept walking, and then he stopped suddenly. “Up there,” he said, gesturing with his head. “He’s up there, but he ain’t gonna cut this …”

“At all, I know.”

“Just don’t drag me in, man. Just leave me be. I don’t want no headaches, thanks.”

I shoved him away from me, and he almost fell on his face on the sidewalk. “Keep your nose clean,” I said. “Go listen to some of Dizzy’s records. But keep your nose clean or I’ll break it for you.”

I saw his face for the first time. He was a young kid, no more than twenty-one, with wide blue eyes and pink cheeks. “Sure, man, sure.” He scrambled to his feet and ran down the street.

I looked up at the red-fronted building, saw one light burning on the top floor, the rest of the windows boarded up. I climbed the sandstone steps and tried the door. When it didn’t open on the second try, I pitted my shoulder against it, and it splintered in a hundred rotting pieces. The hallway was dark.

I started up the steps, making my way toward the light on the top landing. I was winded when I reached it, and I stopped to catch my breath. A thin slice of amber light spilled onto the floor from under a crack in one of the doors. I walked up to the door and tried the knob. It was locked.

“Who is it?” a voice called.

“Me, man,” I answered.

“Zip?”

“Yeah. Come on, man.”

The door opened a crack, and I shoved it all the way open. It hit against something hard, and I kicked it shut and put my back against it. All I saw, at first, was Lew with his arm in a plaster cast hanging in a sling above his waist.

His eyes narrowed when he saw who it was, and he took one step toward me.

“I wouldn’t,” I told him. My voice was soft. “I wouldn’t, Lew.”

“He’s right,” another voice said. There was only one bulb burning in the room, and the corners were in shadow. I peered into one corner, made out an old sofa and a pair of blue slacks stretched the length of it. I followed the slacks up the length of the body, up to a hatchet face with glittering eyes, down again to the open switchblade that was paring the nails of one hand.

“Are you Mr. Punk himself?” I asked.

The long legs swung over the side of the sofa, and the face came into the light. It was a cruel face, young-old, with hard lines stretching from the nose flaps to the thinly compressed lips.

“The name’s Jackie,” he said. “Jackie Byrne. What’s your game, mister?”

“How old are you, Jackie? Twenty-two? Twenty-three?”

“Old enough,” he said. He took another step toward me, tossing the knife into the air and catching it on his palm. “How old are you, mister?”

“I’m really old, punk. I’m all of thirty. Really old.”

“Maybe you won’t get any older. You shouldn’t complain.”

“Charlie Dagerra was about thirty, too,” I said. “He didn’t get any older, either.”

“Yeah,” Byrne said. “That’s just what I meant.”

“How long you been shaking down the local merchants, Jackie?”

He grinned. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. The merchants donate money to me. I’m their favorite charity. They like to give me money. I make sure no snot-nosed kids throw stink bombs in their stores or break their windows. I’m good to them.”

“You think you’ve got a new dodge, don’t you?”

“What?”

“You heard me. You’ve stumbled onto a real easy game. Just point your knife and the storekeepers wet their pants. It’s been done before, Jackie. By bigger punks than you.”

“You don’t have to take that, Jackie,” Lew said. “You don’t have to take that from this bum.”

“You’ll find your girl on a garbage can in one of the hallways,” I told him. “She was missing some clothes when I left her.”

“Why, you son of a—” He lunged toward me and I whirled him around and shoved him across the room toward the sofa. His head clunked against the wall, making a hollow sound.

“All right, pop,” Byrne said. “Enough playing around.”

“I’m not playing, Jackie-boy.”

“Get the hell out of this neighborhood,” he said. “You got a long nose, and I don’t like long noses.”

“And what makes you think you can do anything about my nose, Jackie-boy?”

“A wise guy,” he said disgustedly. “A real wise guy.” He squeezed the knife shut and then pressed a button on its handle. The knife snapped open with a whistling noise.

“Very effective,” I said. “Come on and use it.”

“Nerves of steel, huh?” he asked, a small smile forming on his thin lips.

“No, sonny,” I said. “I just don’t give a damn, that’s all. Come on.” He hesitated, and I shouted, “Come on, you simple bastard!”

He lunged at me, the knife swinging in a glistening arc. I caught his arm and yanked it up, and we struggled under the bare bulb like two ballet dancers. I twisted his arm all the way up then, bringing up my foot at the same time. I kicked him right in the butt, hard, and he went stumbling across the room, struggling for his balance. He turned with a vicious snarl on his face, and then did something no expert knifeman would ever do.

He threw the knife.

I moved to one side as the blade whispered past my head. I heard it bury itself into the doorjamb behind me. I smiled then. “Well! It does appear we’re even.”

I took one step toward him, remembering Lew when it was too late.

“Not exactly, pop,” Lew said.

I didn’t bother turning around because I knew sure as hell that Lew would be holding the .38 I’d taken from him once today. Instead, I dove forward as the gun sounded, the smell of cordite stinking up the small room. My arms wrapped around Byrne’s skinny legs, and we toppled to the floor in a jumble of twisting limbs.

The gun sounded once more, tearing into the plaster wall, and Byrne shouted, “You dumb mug! Knock it off!”

He didn’t say anything else just then because my fist was in his mouth and he was trying hard to swallow it. I picked him up off the floor, keeping him in front of me. I lifted him to his feet and kept him ahead of me, moving toward Lew on the couch.

“Go ahead, Lew,” I said. “Shoot. Kill your buddy and you’ll get me, too.”

“Don’t move,” he said.

I kept crossing the room, holding Byrne’s limp body ahead of me.

“I said don’t move!”

“Shoot, Lew! Fill Jackie-boy with holes. Go ahead!”

He hesitated a moment and that was all I needed. I threw Byrne like a sack of potatoes and Lew moved to one side just as I jumped. I hit him once in the gut and once in the Adam’s apple, almost killing him. Then I grabbed Lew by his collar and Jackie by his, and I dragged them out of the room, and down the stairs, and out on the sidewalk. I found the cop not far from there.

I told Kit all about it later.

Her eyes held stars, and they made me think of a time when I’d roamed the neighborhood as a kid, a kid who didn’t know the meaning of pain or the meaning of grief.

“Come see me, Curt,” she said. “When you get the time, come see me. Please remember, Curt.”

“I will, Kit,” I lied.

I left the grocery store and walked over to Third Avenue. I grabbed the bus there, and I headed for home.

Home …

If I hurried, I might still find a liquor store open.

The bus rumbled past 120th Street, and I looked out of the window and up the high walls of the tenement cliffs. And then 120th Street was gone, and with it Curt Cannon’s boyhood.

I slumped against the seat, pulling my collar high, smiling a little when the woman next to me got up and changed her seat.

Now Die In It

He woke me by shaking me and shouting my name, and I came out of sleep with a cocked fist, ready to smash his head open. The nightmare had been on me again, the dream in which Toni laughed at me, half-naked in Parker’s arms, the dream that always ended the same way: my .45 going back and down, again and again, against Parker’s rotten face, and Toni screaming over and over in the background. Only this time there was a new voice in the dream, and it shouted, “Curt! Curt Cannon!”

I jerked up violently, and I brought my fist back, and I felt strong hands close on my wrist.

“Curt, for God’s sake, it’s me, Rudy!”

I forced my eyes open and blinked in the semidarkness of the room. There was a cot under me, and a blanket over me, and a gorilla sat on the edge of the cot, leaning over me. The gorilla’s name was Rudy, and I remembered him vaguely as a guy I’d know long ago, a guy who lived somewhere in the Bronx.

I passed my hand over my face, trying to wipe away the sleep. I rubbed my bristled jaw, then I reached for the pint of wine, took a long swallow, and asked, “What the hell is it, Rudy?”

“Boy, you’re harder to find than a needle in a haystack.”

“Maybe you haven’t been trying the right places.” We were in a two-bits-a-night flophouse on the Bowery, and I didn’t imagine Rudy was well acquainted with this particular type of resort. “What’s so important, Rudy?”

“We need your help, Curt. My wife told me to get a detective.”

“Then why don’t you get one? Is that why you woke me? Rudy, I ought to …”

“Curt, you’re the only one I know. I came because you’re the only one I know.”

“Don’t you read the papers, you stupid bastard?” I said. “I don’t own a license any more. The cops took it away when I beat up the guy I found with my wife. Now get the hell out and …”

“It’s my wife’s sister, Curt,” he said, ignoring me. “The reason I came is she’s pregnant.”

“Good for her,” I said.

“You don’t follow, Curt. She’s a seventeen-year-old kid. Been living with us since my father-in-law passed away. She ain’t married, Curt.”

“So? For Christ’s sake, Rudy, what the hell do you want me to do about it?”

“My wife wants to find the guy who done it. Curt, she’s been driving me nuts. The kid won’t tell her, and she’s beginning to swell up like a balloon. My wife wants to find him to make him do the right thing.”

“What’s her name?”

“My sister-in-law’s?”

“Yeah.”

“Betty.”

“And she won’t tell you the guy’s name?”

“No, Curt. She’s got a funny sense of loyalty or something, I guess. My wife’s been after her ever since she found out about it, but she won’t peep.”

“What makes you think I can find the guy?”

“If anyone can, you can, Curt.”

I shook my head. “Rudy, do me a favor. Go to a certified agency, will you? Get yourself a detective who can stand up straight.”

“I’ll tell you the truth, Curt. I can’t afford it. I got a kid of my own, a lot of mouths to feed. Help me, Curt, will you?”

“No! God damn it, I don’t practice any more. Go back home, Rudy. Forget you found me. Do that, will you?”

“It ain’t so much for me, Curt. It’s the wife. This thing is making a wreck of her. Curt, I never asked you for anything before, but this is something else. Believe me, if I didn’t have to ask you …”

“All right, all right!” I shouted. I cursed and swung my legs over the side of the cot, reaching for my shoes on the floor. They were cold, and I cursed a little more. When I finally had them laced, I asked, “You still a night watchman?”

“Yes,” Rudy said.

“You got a car with you?”

“Yes, Curt.” He looked at me hopefully. “Are you going to help me?”

“Yeah, yeah. I’m going to help. I’m the craziest bastard alive, but I’ll help you. Let’s go,” I said.

His car was parked downstairs. He drove quickly and he filled me in on a few more details as we headed for the Bronx. His wife Madeline had found out Betty was pregnant about a month ago. The kid was already four months gone by that time, and Madeline was frantic. Both she and Rudy talked to the girl, but they couldn’t get anything out of her. They asked discreet questions around the neighborhood, but since they didn’t want the secret to get out, they had to be very careful—and their questioning had netted a big fat zero. They’d asked the kid to get rid of the baby, and she’d refused. And then they’d asked her to have it at a home where they’d take the baby off her hands as soon as it was born, and that drew a blank also. All the while, Betty refused to name the guy.

“That’s a little strange, isn’t it?” I asked Rudy.

“Sure,” Rudy agreed. “But you know how these teenagers are. Crazier’n hell.”

“Is she pretty?”

“Beautiful,” Rudy said. “Blue eyes, black hair. Looks just the way my wife did when she was that age. You ever meet Madeline, Curt?”

“No.”

“Well, she’s changed a lot since I first married her. But the kid is a dead ringer for what she used to look like. You’ll see.”

“Does she have a lot of boy friends?”

“The usual. Neighborhood kids mostly.”

“Did you talk to any of them?”

“A few. I couldn’t tell them what I was after, though, so it was kind of tough.”

“What kind of a crowd was she in? Fast?”

“I really don’t know, Curt. She didn’t talk about it.”

“Uh-huh.”

“You think you’ll find the guy?”

“You haven’t given me a hell of a lot to go on.”

“That’s all there is, Curt. Maybe Madeline can give you a little more. She talked to her more than I did.”

“We’ll see,” I said.

He pulled the car up in front of an apartment house in the East Bronx. A few women were sitting on chairs in front of the house, and when Rudy got out of the car, they nodded at him. When I got out, they stared at me distastefully and then went back to their gossip.

We climbed four flights and then Rudy knocked on a painted brown door. The door opened wide, and a woman’s voice reached us.

“What took you so long?” it said. The voice belonged to a woman of about twenty-eight, a few years younger than both Rudy and me. Her black hair was pulled to the back of her neck, tied there with a white ribbon. Her eyes were tired, very tired.

“Gee, honey,” Rudy said, “I made it as fast as I could.”

“You didn’t make it fast enough,” Madeline said tonelessly. “Betty’s dead.”

I was standing behind Rudy, so I couldn’t see his face. He backed up a few paces, though, and I could imagine what was on his face.

“D-d-dead?” he stammered. “Betty? Dead?”

It was silent in the hall for the space of a heart tick, and then I followed him into the apartment. The furniture was old, but the place was neat and well kept.

Rudy buried his face in his hands. Madeline sat in a chair opposite him; there were no tears on her face.

“Was it a suicide?” I asked her.

“No,” she said. “The police called about ten minutes ago. They found her in Yonkers. She … she was strangled, they said.”

Rudy suddenly raised his head.

“This is Curt Cannon, Madeline. Curt, this is my wife.”

She mumbled, “How do you do?” and I nodded. Then a silence invaded the room. Madeline looked at me for a long time, and finally said, “I still want you to find him, Mr. Cannon.”

“Well, the police will probably …”

“I want you to find him. I want you to find him and beat him black and blue, and then you can turn him over to the police. I’ll pay you, Mr. Cannon.” She stood up abruptly and walked into the kitchen. I heard her moving things on the pantry shelf. When she came back, she was holding a wad of bills in her hand.

“We were saving this for a new car,” she said. “I’ll give it to you. All of it. Just find the one who did this to Betty. Just find him and make him sorry. Cripple him if you have to. Find him, Mr. Cannon.” She paused and thrust the bills at me. “Here.”

“Keep the money,” I said. “I’ll look for him, but if I find him, he goes straight to the police.”

Her lower lip began to tremble, and then the tears started, the tears she’d been holding in check for a long time now. I walked into the hallway with Rudy, and I whispered, “Where’d she hang out? Who were some of those guys you questioned?”

“There’s an ice-cream parlor off Burke Avenue. Lots of them in that neighborhood. This one is called The Dewdrop. You know the kind of place. Bunch of teen-age kids hang out there. She used to go to this one a lot, I think.”

“Rough crowd?”

“I don’t think so. Here, I’ll give you the address.” He fished in his wallet and came up with a scrap of paper. A bunch of numbers and a street name were scrawled on the paper with a ballpoint pen. I read the address, looked at it until I had memorized it. Rudy put it back into his wallet. “They seemed like nice kids, Curt.”

“Yeah,” I said. “It takes a real nice kid to choke a girl.”

“Let me know how you make out, Curt.”

“I will, Rudy. You’d better go back to your wife.”

I started looking for the address Rudy had given me. It turned out to be a small, narrow shop set between two buildings in a space which would have made a better tailor shop—where all the work is done backstage—than an ice-cream parlor. But ice-cream parlor it was. There was no question about it. The words The Dewdrop had been painted onto the plate-glass window, and the same artist had painted the picture of an ice-cream scoop dripping a great big blob of ice cream. The art work was amateurish. It gave the place an uncertain look; it was, possibly, that very look which appealed to the teen-agers. I opened the door, and a bell tinkled, and then the bell was drowned in the roar from the jukebox, and I wished I had a drink.

There was a counter, with stools on the right-hand side of the store, and four booths painted red, blue, yellow and green on the left-hand side. A man with a mustache was working behind the counter. Two teen-age boys were sitting in the booth farthest from the door, beating their feet against the floor in time with the music. The jukebox was emitting the high wail of someone in his death throes, the piano and guitar behind him plinkety-plunking in a monotonous funeral-march tempo. I walked to the counter.

“You the owner?” I asked.

The guy with the mustache was scooping nuts from cans into his fancy sundae jars. “Yeah,” he said. “Why?”

“I’m trying to find out about a girl named Betty,” I said.

“Betty who?”

I dug in my memory for the name Rudy had given me on the ride up to the Bronx. “Betty Richards,” I said. “Do you know her?”

“I get a lot of kids in here,” the man said, carefully scooping the nuts and redepositing them. “Ask them kids in the booth. They’ll know better than me.”

“Thanks,” I said. I went over to the booth. The boys didn’t look up at me. They kept tapping their feet and listening to the juke.

At last, one of them raised his head. He was about eighteen, the sure look of adolescence on his face, the knowledgeable look of a man of the world. He turned to his buddy. “Brother, can you spare a dime?” he said.

His buddy stopped stomping his feet for a moment. He glanced at me. “No handouts today, mac,” he said. “Drift along. The park’s thataway.”

“I’m a friend of Betty’s,” I said.

“Betty who?”

“Richards.”

“So?” the first kid said. “What about her?”

“That’s what I wanted to ask.”

“I don’t know her,” the first kid said.

The second kid got up, went to the juke, made another selection, then came back to the booth. As if he hadn’t already spoken to me, he said to his friend, “Who’s this, Bob?”

“He’s looking for Betty Richards,” Bob said.

“Yeah?” He studied me, as if he were debating whether or not to throw me out of the store. I was half-hoping he’d try it.

“Not exactly looking for her,” I said. “I want to know a few things about her.”

“Yeah? What kind of things?”

“What’s your name, junior?”

“Who wants to know?”

“I do. Curt Cannon.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

We held a staring contest for about two minutes while the boy sized me up and made his decision.

“Jack,” he said at last.

“Do we talk about Betty now?”

“I ain’t her brother,” Jack said.

“What do you know about her?”

“Why do you want to know?”

“Who she dated,” I said. “When she came in here. Who she hung around with when she was here. Things like that.”

“Why do you want to know?”

I was getting tired of playing footsie, so I said, “Because someone strangled her a little while ago. She’s dead.”

Bob’s feet stopped jiggling. Jack stared at me.

“Yeah?” he said.

“Yeah.”

“We don’t know nothing about it,” he said.

“Nobody said you did. Tell me about Betty.”

“She used to come in here, but she never stayed long. She’d come in, have a Coke, and then take off.”

“You sure, Jack?”

“I’m positive. Ain’t that right, Bob?”

The other kid nodded. “That’s right, mister. She just came and went, that’s all.”

“She date any of the kids who come in here?”

“Nope. Most of the guys have steadies. They wouldn’t ask for trouble.”

“Did she ever come in here with anyone?”

“A guy, you mean?”

“Yes.”

Jack thought this over for a moment. “No. Never. She’d just come in, hang around a while, and then leave. Just like I told you.”

“Did she ever say she had to meet anyone after she left?”

“No, not to me. She wouldn’t tell something like that to a guy. Maybe she told one of the girls, I don’t know.”

“She friendly with any of the girls who come in here?”

“I guess not,” Jack said. “She was pretty much a lone wolf, Betty was.”

“How about Donna?” Bob asked.

“Oh, yeah. Donna,” Jack said.

“Who’s Donna?” I asked.

“The girl who works here nights. A waitress. She’s real sharp. An older girl. She’s real sharp, ain’t she, Bob?”

“Yeah,” Bob said. “She’s the most.”

“How old is she?”

“Twenty-three, twenty-four. Yeah, about that. Wouldn’t you say about that, Bob?”

“Yeah, about that,” Bob agreed.

“She was kind of friendly with Betty,” Jack said.

“Where can I reach her?”

“I like Donna,” Jack said. “You can find her for yourself. I don’t know nothing.”

“Look …”

“She’s a nice girl. I don’t want to get her in no trouble.”

“Where do I find her?”

“That’s your problem.”

“Sonny,” I said, “maybe you didn’t understand me. Betty was killed. Murdered. Finding her murderer is a little more important than protecting the pure white innocence of Donna.”

“She ain’t so pure,” Bob said.

“She ain’t so innocent, either,” Jack said.

“She’s sharp,” Bob said.

“The most,” Jack said.

“And she was friendly with Betty, right?” I asked.

“Yeah. Well, they talked. Whenever Betty came in, they’d talk.”

“About what?”

“I don’t know,” Jack said.

“Donna knows,” I told him. “What’s her address?”

We held another short staring contest. I won again. Jack sighed.

“All right, all right,” he said. “She lives right around the corner.” He took a pencil stub from his pocket and then pulled a napkin from the container on the table. “Donna Crane,” he said, writing the name on the napkin. Under that, he wrote the address, and then said, “It’s the yellow apartment house on the corner. Apartment Thirty. You can’t miss it.”

“Thanks,” I said.

“You’ll have your hands full with her,” Bob warned me. “She’s sharp.”

“I know,” I said. “The most.”

And I left them.

The card under the Buzzer read Donna Crane. I pushed the buzzer and walked to the lobby door, then waited. Nothing happened, so I pushed the buzzer again, waited a few more minutes, and then pressed two buzzers at random, hoping one of them would be home. The door clicked open, and I started up the steps to the third floor. It was a nice apartment house, lower-middle class, with no hallway smells and no broken plaster. The floors were clean, and even the windows on each landing were freshly washed. I pulled up alongside 3-C and twisted the old-fashioned screw-type bell in the door. It rattled loudly, and when I’d waited for three minutes with no results, I twisted it again.

“Shake it, don’t break it,” a girl’s voice said.

I waited until I heard footsteps approaching the door, and then I passed my hand over my hair in an abortive attempt to make myself look a little more presentable.

The door swung wide, and the girl looked out at me curiously.

“Christ,” she said, “did you get his number?”

“Whose number?” I asked.

“The guy who ran you over,” she said.

“Very funny,” I said. “You Donna Crane?”

“The same. If you’re selling something, you need a shave.”

“You knew Betty Richards,” I said.

“Sure.” Her eyes narrowed, and she said, “Hey, you’re not … no, you couldn’t be.”

“Who?”

“Never mind. You coming in?” She grinned coyly. “The neighbors will talk.”

She was blonde, blonde the way Toni had been. She wore a green sweater that had been knitted around her and black shorts turned up far enough to exhibit the graceful curve of her thigh. Orchard Beach had provided her with a Bronx tan, but it didn’t hide the sophistication of her face. She was Broadway on Burke Avenue, with all the glitter and all the tinsel—and I guess maybe the neighbors did talk a little about her.

“Are you or aren’t you coming in, pal?” she prompted.

I stepped into the apartment, and she closed the door behind me. The blinds were still drawn, and the place had all the dim coolness of Grant’s Tomb. I smelled coffee brewing in the kitchen as she led me into the living room. She sat opposite me and folded her long, tanned legs under her with practiced ease. She propped one elbow on the sofa back, tilted her head and asked, “So now, what about Betty?”

“Just like that, huh? Don’t care who I am, or anything.”

“I know who you are.”

“Oh.”

“Sure. I read the papers. I saw the pictures. Take off the beard and some of the whisky flab, and add Cannon to the Curt. The screwed shamus.” I didn’t answer, so she said, “I’m right, aren’t I?”

“You’re right,” I said wearily.

“I thought they threw you in the jug or something.”

“They dropped charges.”

“Yeah, that’s right,” she said, nodding. “I remember now. The babe went to Mexico, didn’t she?”

“Can it,” I said.

Her eyes opened wide, and she thrust out her lower lip. “Didn’t know you were still warm for her form, pal.”

“I said can it!”

She shrugged, and her breasts bobbed beneath the tight sweater. “Son, if you don’t like, this brand of jive, you know where you can go, don’t you?”

I stood up. “Listen …” I started to say, but I couldn’t stop her.

“Nobody told you to marry a slut. You picked a dud, and you …”

I slapped her with my open hand, catching her on the side of her jaw. Her head reeled back, and she scrambled off the couch, her eyes slitted. “Get the hell out of here,” she said.

“Not until I ask a few questions.”

“You got no right to ask questions. The cops took your license, pal.”

“What did you and Betty talk about?” I asked.

Abruptly, she started to walk toward the phone. I grabbed her wrist and swung her around, and she came up against me, hard, her face inches from mine. She was rearing her head back to spit when I clamped my hand over her mouth. She wriggled, freed her mouth, and then bit down on my hand, her upper and lower teeth almost meeting in my flesh. I shoved her away from me, and she ran back at me, throwing herself at me like a wildcat. But there was something more than anger in her eyes this time, something I recognized instantly.

This time I grabbed her arm and twisted it behind her, and when she brought her head back, my lips came down against hers. She struggled for a moment, and then went limp in my arms. I lifted her and carried her to the sofa, her lips buried in my neck, her hands running over my back. I smelled coffee from the kitchen, and then there was only the smell of her hair and her body in my nostrils, and the sound of her ragged breathing in the cool, dim living room.

She was curled up like a contented cat, a cigarette glowing in her hand, relaxed against the cushions of the sofa. There was a pleased smile on her face, and some of the hardness had rubbed off to leave features that were young and nicely boned.

“You need a shave,” she said.

“I know.” I lit a cigarette, blew out a stream of smoke and asked, “Do we talk now?”

She closed her eyes briefly, still smiling. “Must we?”

“We must.”

“Then talk, Curt.”

“What did Betty have to say to you?”

“Why?”

“Because she’s dead. Because someone was careless enough to strangle her.”

“Oh,” she said. That was all. Just a small “oh” but her face had grown pale beneath its tan, and she was breathing harder.

“You did talk? You and Betty?”

“Yes. Yes, we talked sometimes.”

“What about?”

“Dead,” she said. She tasted the word, and then, repeated it. “Dead. A nice kid, too. Mixed up, but nice.”

“Mixed up about what?”

“What are most seventeen-year-old kids mixed up about? Love. Sex.” She shrugged. “The same thing.”

“Not always. How was she mixed up?”

“This guy …”

“What guy?” I asked quickly.

“A guy she was going with. She’d sit and talk about him when she came to the shop. She had it bad, all right.”

“What was his name?”

“Freddie. That’s what she called him. Freddie.”

“Freddie what?”

“She never said. Just Freddie.”

“Great. What did she say about him?”

“The usual. You know.”

“I don’t know.”

Donna eyed me levelly. “You can be an irritating louse, you know?”

“Sure,” I said. “Tell me what she told you about him.”

“Well, she didn’t want her family to know about him, for some reason. She used to meet him on the sneak. She’d come in to the Dewdrop as a blind, stay there a while, and then take off. She usually met him at about ten or so, I think.”

“Did she tell you that?”

“Well, no. But she always left the place at about that time. I figured …”

“Where’d she go when she left?”

“I never went with her.”

“Did she tell you how she first happened to meet this guy? Where? When?”

“No.”

“Did she ever mention his age?”

“No.”

“What he did for a living?”

“No.”

I ran a hand over my face. “That helps a lot.” I sat there for a few seconds and then asked, “Anything to drink besides coffee here?”

“Coffee! Holy Jesus!” She untangled her tanned legs and ran across the room, and I watched, knowing there was nothing but her under that sweater. I watched her go, noticing the curve of her legs, and the firmness of her body, and then she was in the kitchen turning down the gas under the pot.

“Beer all right?” she asked.

“It’ll do.”

“This isn’t Joe’s Grill, pal,” she said. I heard the refrigerator door open, and then heard the sound of a bottle being placed on the kitchen table. There were a few more kitchen sounds, and then the fizz of the beer as she look off the cap. When she came into the living room, she was carrying the bottle in one hand and a steaming cup of coffee balanced in the other hand.

She gave me the bottle and said, “If you want a glass, go get it. I’ve only got three hands.”

“This’ll be fine.”

She curled up again, and I took a deep drag of the bottle while she sipped at the hot coffee, peering at me over the edge of the cup.

“Did she ever describe this Freddie?” I asked. I wiped my lips and held the bottle in my lap.

“Nope. I gathered he was from Squaresville, though.”

“What makes you say that?”

“The questions she asked. A hip character wouldn’t leave questions like that in a kid’s head.”

“What kind of questions?”

“Well, personal things.”

“Like what? Honey, “I’m not a dentist. Let’s have less teeth-pulling.”

“Don’t get it in an uproar, buster,” she told me. She took an angry gulp of coffee, burning her tongue and shooting me a hot glare.

“She asked me how to … well, you know.” She paused, waiting for my comment. When I made none, she added, “You know.”

“In short,” I said, “you think she was pretty innocent?”

“Innocent? Brother, she was the original fiddler who didn’t know his bass from his oboe.”

“Well,” I said, “somebody taught her damned fast.”

“How do you mean?”

“She was pregnant when she was killed.”

“Ouch!” Donna Crane winced and then shook her head slowly. She uncrossed her legs. “You think this Freddie …”

“Could be.”

She put her coffee cup down and said, “I wish you luck. If he did it, I hope you get him.”

I walked into the foyer and paused with my hand on the doorknob. She reached up to touch my face and asked, “Do you ever shave?”

“Sometimes. Why?”

She shrugged, and her chest did things again. Then her lips were on mine, gently this time. My hands found the small of her back, and she pressed closer to me for an instant, drawing away almost immediately. “Take a shave sometime, Curt. And then come back.”

I opened the door and stepped into the comparatively bright hallway, grinning back at her. “Maybe I will, Donna. Maybe I will.”

Freddie.

Just a name. Just one Freddie out of thousands of Freddies in the city, the millions of Freddies in the world. Gather them all together, and then pick a Freddie out of the bunch.

There was a mild breeze on the air, and it searched my face and the open throat of my shirt. The streets were crowded with people seduced by spring. They breathed deeply of her fragrance, flirted back at her, treated her as the mistress she was, the wanton who would grow old with summer’s heat and die with autumn’s first chill blast. The man with his hot-dog cart stood in the gutter, and the sun-seekers crowded the sauerkraut pot, thronged the umbrella-topped stand. The high-school girls ambled home with all the time in the world, with all their lives ahead of them. The men stood around the candy stores and the delicatessens talking about the fights or the coming baseball season, and they looked at silk-stockinged legs and wished for a stronger breeze.

Or they went about their jobs, delivering mail, washing windows, fixing cars, and they drew in deeply of the warm air and sighed a little. It was spring, at last.

And one of them was Freddie.

I walked along Burke Avenue, wondering how long it had been since I’d eaten a hot dog, since I’d seen a baseball game. A long time. A long, long time. And how long ago to seventeen? How many years, how many centuries?

What’s a seventeen-year-old kid like? No longer the girl, not yet the woman—Why does a seventeen-year-old hide a lover? Love at seventeen is a wonderland of dreamy records and beach parties and tender kisses and silent handclasps. It is not a thing to hide.

But Betty Richards hid her love, and her love was hidden behind the name of Freddie, and New York City is a big place.

I needed a drink. I needed one because I couldn’t think straight any more. I was ready to go to Rudy and say, “Pal, I’m lost. Me and eight million others all have spring fever, only it shows more on me because I’m still in love with a bitch who done me wrong, like the song says, Rudy. So let’s just drop it and forget it and let the cops do the work. Okay, Rudy? Okay, pal?”

But would a cop understand a kid with her first love? Would a cop give one good goddam?

I cursed myself, and I had my drink, and then I started from the beginning again, and the beginning was The Dewdrop.

I didn’t go inside this time.

I stopped at the door, and then began retracing my steps. Betty Richards had walked out of this shop on many a night. Ten o’clock, and Freddie waiting. Where? I started up the street.

A car? Would he pick her up in a car? Maybe. But not here. If Betty had gone to all this trouble to hide the guy, he certainly wouldn’t pick her up outside the ice-cream parlor. Not with a bunch of curious teen-agers inside. A few blocks away then? Even that seemed like an unnecessary risk. A few miles away? A dozen miles away? Why not? But where?

I turned left and started walking toward Burke Avenue. The side street was lined with private houses. The front stoops sported fat women in housedresses who looked up when I passed and muttered about what the neighborhood was coming to. When I got to Burke Avenue, I looked right and left. A block down on my left, looking like a blackened monster against the sky, was the elevated structure. I turned and headed for it, walking past the drycleaning shop, the delicatessen, the bakery, pausing at the newsstand on the corner, and then noticing the hack stand. It was a hack stand for three cabs, right behind the newsstand which crouched under the steps leading to the elevated structure.

A cab was at the curb. A driver sat behind the wheel reading a comic book and picking at his teeth with a matchbook cover. I poked my head into the taxi.

“Hop in, mister,” he said. “Where you going?” Then he got a good look at me. “Sure you can afford the ride, mac?” he said.

“I’m not riding,” I told him.

“I don’t believe in staking strangers to drinks,” he said. “So shove off.”

“I’m not looking for a stake, either,” I said.

“No? What then? You passing the time of day?”

“This your regular hack stand?”

“Sure.”

“Ever been here around ten at night?”

“Lots of times. Why?”

“Ever carry a young girl, blue eyes, black hair. A very pretty young girl—about seventeen?”

“How the hell should I know? I carry lots of pretty …”

“This one might have taken a cab regularly. Or maybe she went up to the elevated. Remember seeing her?” I was guessing now, of course, and the guess might be a bit wide, but I figured any rendezvous Betty may have had was probably a thing with a set time and a set place. And Donna Crane had told me that Betty usually left the icecream parlor at ten.

“Why do you want to know, mac?” the cabby said.

“I’m interested.”

“You better take off before I call a cop.”

“Look,” I said, “this girl was killed. Her sister hired me to …”

“Jesus,” he said. He squinched his eyes down tight, swallowed his Adam’s apple and allowed it to bob up into his throat again. “Jesus.”

“Do you remember her?”

“Blue eyes,” he said. “Black hair. Seventeen.”

“Yeah. If she took a cab, it would be at about ten. Did you ever carry her?”

The cabby shook his head. “Nope. I’d remember if I did. Why don’t you ask some of the other guys? They pull in from time to time, whenever they ain’t got a fare. Ask them. Maybe they’ll remember.”

“Thanks,” I said. His was the only cab in the hack stand at the moment. I went upstairs to the train station and talked to the man in the change booth. He didn’t remember Betty Richards, either. I sighed, went down to the street, and headed for Rudy’s place.

It wasn’t far from Burke Avenue, and I didn’t mind the walk because it was such a nice day. I climbed the four flights and knocked on the painted brown door, and waited.

Rudy answered the door.

“Curt, come in, come in.”

I walked into the apartment, looked around for Madeline, wondering if she’d gotten over the first shock of knowing her sister was dead. Rudy followed my glance and said, “She’s in the bedroom. She’s taking it kind of hard, Curt.”

“You know any Freddie?” I asked.

“Who?”

“Freddie.”

Rudy seemed to consider this for a moment. “No,” he said slowly, “I don’t think so. What’s his last name?”

“All I’ve got is Freddie.”

“Is it a lead, Curt? I mean, do you think this Freddie is the one who did it?”

“Maybe. You think Madeline would know him?”

“I don’t know, Curt.” He glanced at his watch hastily. “Gee, kid,” he said, “I have to run. The day watchman goes off at five. I relieve him then, and I ain’t relieved, myself, until, one in the morning.”

I looked at the clock on the kitchen wall. It was nearing four-thirty. “Will you get Madeline for me before you leave?”

“Sure. Just a minute.”

He went into the bedroom, and I heard their muffled voices behind the closed door. It was very still in the living room. The sounds from the street climbed the brick facing of the building and sifted through the open windows. The breeze lifted the curtains silently. They hung on the air like restless, specters, falling and rising again. The bedroom door opened, and Madeline came out with Rudy’s arm around her shoulders. Her eyes were red-rimmed and her nose was raw from constant blowing.

“I have to run,” Rudy said again. “I’ll see you, Curt.”

“Sure,” I said.

He peeked Madeline on the cheek and then walked to the door and left.

Madeline moved to the window, stood there motionless looking down at the street below.

“Do you know a guy named Freddie?” I asked.

She didn’t answer for a long time, and then she said, “What? I’m sorry, I didn’t …”

“Freddie. Do you know anyone named Freddie? Did Betty have any friends by that name? Anybody?”

Madeline shook her head wearily. “No. No, I don’t know anyone by that name. Why?”

I shrugged. “Nothing yet. Have you got a picture of Betty?”

“Yes. Someplace there’s a picture.”

“May I have it?”

“All right,” she said dully. She left the room again, and I heard her rummaging around in the bedroom closet. The springs on the bed squeaked when she sat down. There were other sounds, leaves being turned, and then a gentle, sobbing again. I heard her blow her nose, and I waited, and the clock on the kitchen wall threw minutes into the room. She came out at last, drying her eyes again, and handed me a small snapshot.

Rudy had been right. His sister-in-law was a beautiful kid with a clean-scrubbed look of freshness about her.

“I’ll bring, it back,” I said.

“All right.” She nodded, walked over to the window again and stared out. She was still looking down at the street when I left, closing the door gently behind me.

The cop was waiting for me just outside the building. I saw him there, started to step around him, almost bumped into him as he moved into my path.

I lifted my head, and our eyes locked. I didn’t like what I saw.

“Excuse me,” I said.

I started to go around him again when he clamped a big paw on my shoulder. “Just a second,” he said.

I stopped, my eyes studying his face. He was a big guy, with a thin nose and pleasant blue eyes. He was smiling, and the smile wasn’t pleasant. “What’s the trouble, officer?” I asked.

“No trouble,” he answered. “You Curt Cannon?”

A frown edged onto my forehead. “Yes. What …”

“Want to come along with me?” he asked pleasantly.

I kept staring at him. “Why? What do you want with me?”

“We’ve had a complaint, Cannon.”

“What kind of a complaint?”

“They’ll explain it to you.”

“Suppose you explain it,” I said.

“Suppose I don’t,” the cop answered.

“Look,” I said, “don’t blind me with your badge. I’ve had enough cops in my hair to last me …”

He grabbed the cuff of my jacket and twisted it in his fist, bringing my arm up behind me at the same time. I winced in pain, and the cop said, “Let’s do it the easy way, Cannon. This is a nice quiet neighborhood.”

“Sure,” I said. “Just let go my God-damned arm.”

He stopped twisting it, but he kept holding to the cuff, edging me toward the curb and the squad car I hadn’t noticed until just then.

“Hop in,” he said, holding open the door. “This one is on the city.”

I got in and he climbed in behind me, wedging me between himself and the driver. He closed the door and said, “Okay, Sam.” The cop behind the wheel threw the car into gear and shoved off.…

We pulled up alongside a gray stone building with green lights hanging on either side of the door. The cop held the car door open for me, and then the driver stood on the sidewalk with his hand on the butt of his holstered .38 Police Special while the first cop and I climbed the steps to the precinct station.

The cop led me straight to the desk and said, “I’ve got Cannon, Ed. Want to tell the lieutenant?”

“Go on in,” the cop behind the desk said. “Lieutenant’s expecting you.”

The big cop nodded, shoved me ahead of him down a hallway near the front of the station. He opened a door for me about halfway down the hall, gestured with his thumb and then added another shove to make sure I went the right way.

The plain-clothes man sitting behind the desk stood up when I came in. He nodded at the cop and said, “All right, Jim. I’ll take it from here.” Jim saluted smartly, like a rookie after corporal’s stripes, and then left me alone with the plain-clothes man. A plaque read: Detective-Lieutenant Gunnisson.

“What’s it all about, lieutenant?” I asked.

Gunnisson was a smallish cop with a balding head and weary eyes. His mouth echoed the weariness by drooping loosely down to an almost invisible chin. He looked more like the caretaker in a museum than a police lieutenant. I wondered which Congressman his family had known.

“You’re Curt Cannon, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Got a complaint, Cannon.”

“So I’ve heard.”

He lifted his brows quickly, and his brown eyes snapped to my face. “Don’t get snotty, Cannon. We’re just itching to jug you.”

“On what charge?”

“Practicing without a license.”

“Where’d you dream that one up?”

“We got a complaint.”

“Who from?”

“Phone call. Clocked at—” he glanced at a paper on his desk—“four forty-five.”

“Who from?”

“Caller wouldn’t give a name. Said you were investigating a case and thought we should look into it. What about it, Cannon?”

“It’s all horse manure.”

“You’re not on a case?”

“A case of Scotch, maybe. Who’d hire me, lieutenant?”

“That’s the same question I asked.”

“Well, you got your answer. Can I go now?”

“Just a second. Not so fast.” His manner relaxed, and he sat down behind the desk, offered me a cigarette. I took it, and he lit it for me and then smiled.

“What you been doing, Cannon?” he asked.

“Spending my winters in Florida. Don’t I look it?”

He seemed about to get sore, but then the smile flitted onto his face again, becoming a small chuckle in a few seconds. “Tell you the truth,” he said abruptly, “I think you were right, Cannon. That bastard had it coming to him.”

I didn’t say anything. I watched his face warily.

“Fact,” he went on, “you should have given him more. How’d you catch him, Cannon?”

“What do you mean?”

“What happened? The papers said you went into the bedroom and found him loving your wife? That right? What was the bastard doing?” His eyes were gleaming brightly now. “Was she really in a nightgown? Did he …”

I leaned over the desk and grabbed the lapels of his suit in both my hands. “Shut up!” I said. My face was tight and I was ready to tear this filthy weasel into little pieces.

“Listen, Cannon …” Some of his old manner was back, some of the hard shell of the policeman.

“Shut up!” I shoved him hard and he flew back into his chair, and then the chair toppled over and fell to the floor. He blinked his eyes, and all the filth in his mind crowded into his face, leaving a small man hiding behind the skirts of a big job. He scrambled to his knees and flicked open the bottom drawer of his desk. His hand crawled into the drawer like a fast spider. He was pulling his hand out when I stepped behind the desk and kicked the drawer shut.

He would have screamed, but I kicked out again and this time it was where he lived, and he doubled up in pain, his face twisted into a horrible, distorted grimace.

I stood over him with my fists clenched. He’d forgotten all about the gun in the bottom drawer now. He had something more important to be concerned with.

“I’m leaving,” I told him.

“You stinking …”

“You can send one of your boys after me if you like, lieutenant. Unless you’re afraid of walking down dark streets at night.”

“You’re not getting away with this,” he gasped. “You’re …

“Assault and battery, resisting arrest … what else? I’ll serve the sentence, lieutenant, while you prepare your will.”

“You threatening me, Cannon?”

I stood over him, and the look in my eyes told him I wasn’t kidding. “Yes, lieutenant, I’m threatening you. My advice is to forget all about this. Just forget I was even here.”

He got to his feet and was about to say something when the door sprang open. The big cop, Jim, looked at the lieutenant and then at me.

“Everything all right, sir?” he asked.

Gunnisson hesitated a moment, and then his eyes met mine and he turned his face quickly. “Yes,” he said sharply. “God-damned chair fell over.” He passed his hand over his scalp and said, “Show Mr. Cannon out. He was just leaving.”

I smiled thinly, and Detective-Lieutenant Gunnisson picked up the chair and sat in it, busying himself with some reports on his desk. Jim closed the door behind him and I asked, “Did you really get a complaint?”

“Sure. What the hell you think—we got nothing better to do than play around with a monkey like you?”

I didn’t answer him. I walked straight to the front door, down the front steps and out into the street.

Dusk crouched on the horizon, and then night sprang into its place, leaping into the sky like a black panther. The stars pressed inquisitive white noses against the black pane of darkness, and the moon beamed like a balding old man.

The neon flickers stabbed the darkness with lurid reds and greens, oranges, blues, giving spring her evening clothes. There was still a warm breeze in the air, and inside The Dewdrop I could hear a throaty tenor sax doing crazy things with How High The Moon.

It was ten o’clock.

I walked up the block quickly, the way a young girl anxious to meet her lover would walk. My heels clicked on the pavement, echoing in the darkness of the tree-lined street. I turned left on Burke, reached the elevated structure, took the steps up two at a time. I walked to the change booth, slipped a quarter under the grilled panel.

“What time’s the next downtown train pull in?” I asked the attendant.

He glanced up at the clock. “About ten-o-nine.”

“Thanks,” I said. I collected my change, shoved my way through the turnstile. The clock on the wall said ten-o-six. I climbed the steps to the Downtown side. I reached the platform and waited, and in a few minutes a downtown express pulled in. The doors slid open, and I stepped into the train, starting to look immediately for a conductor. I was going to take a narrow gamble, and even if it paid off I didn’t know where to go from there. But the gamble was necessary because so far I’d slammed into blank wall after blank wall—and Freddie was still loose somewhere in the city.

I found the conductor in one of the middle cars reading a morning newspaper. I sat down next to him and he glanced at me sideways and then went back to the paper.

“Are you the only conductor on the train?” I asked.

He looked up suspiciously. “Yes. Why?”

“Have you had the night shift long?”

“Past month. Why?”

The train rumbled into the Allerton Avenue station, and he got up to press the buttons that would open the doors. He stood between the cars, waiting for the passengers to load and unload, and then he came back to his seat.

“Why?” he asked immediately.

I fished the picture out of my jacket pocket. “Know this girl?”

He stared at the picture curiously, and then looked at me as if I were nuts. “Can’t say that I do.”

“Look at it hard,” I said. “Look at it damned hard. She got on at Burke Avenue two or three times during the week. She always caught this train. Look at the God-damned picture!”

He looked at the picture hard, and the train rumbled toward the next station. He still hadn’t said a word when we pulled into Pelham Parkway and he got up to press his buttons again. When he came back, he continued to look at the picture.

“We’ll be in Grand Central before you make up your mind.”

“I already made up my mind. I never seen her before.” He paused. “Why do you want her?”

“Look at it again,” I told him, almost reaching out for his throat. “She was a happy sort of kid. Smiling all the time. God damn it, mister, remember!”

“There’s nothing to remember. I just never seen her before.”

I slapped the picture against the palm of my hand. “Jesus! Who else works on this train?”

“Just me and the motorman, that’s all.”

“Where’s the motorman? First car?”

“Listen, you can’t bother him with that …”

“Open your doors, mister. Here’s Bronx Park East.”

He turned to say something, then realized the train was already in the station. I left him as he stepped between the cars, and I ran all the way to the first car. I was wild now, reaching for straws, but someone had to remember—someone! The train was just starting up again when I reached the motorman’s little compartment and yanked open the door.

He was a small man with glasses, and he almost leaped out of the window when I jabbed the picture at him.

“Do you know this girl?”

“What!”

“Look at this picture! Do you know this girl? Have you ever seen her before, riding on this train?”

“Hey!” he said, “you ain’t allowed in here.”

“Shut up and look at this picture.”

He glanced at it quickly, switching his eyes back to the track ahead almost instantly. “No, I don’t know her.”

“You never …”

“I watch the tracks,” he said dutifully, “not the broads that get on and off.…”

I slammed the door on his soliloquy and started toward the back of the train again. I was ready to beat the old man’s head against the metal floor if he didn’t start remembering damned soon. When I reached him, he shouted, “You get off this train! You get off this train or I’ll get help at the next station.”

I took a quick evaluation of his chances of ever remembering Betty, and when the train pulled into 180th Street I got off with the conductor swearing behind me. I crossed under the platforms and came up on the Uptown side. Then I took the next train back to Burke Avenue.

There were three cabs parked in the hack stand. I showed Betty’s picture to each of the three drivers. None of them recognized her.

It was like a big merry-go-round with me grabbing at the brass ring and always missing. I was ready to call it quits again, ready to chuck the whole stinking mess back into Rudy’s lap. But there was one person I wanted to see again. She’d given me almost everything I knew about Betty Richards, and I had a hunch I could get more information from her if I really tried.

I hoped she’d be at The Dewdrop, and I was happy to see her behind the counter when I walked in. The jukebox was bashing out some rock ’n’ roll masterpiece, and the place was packed with teen-aged boys and girls. I walked over to Donna and said, “Dance?”

She looked up and gave me a half-smile. “You still haven’t shaved, have you?”

“No, I haven’t.”

The smile widened. “Have you got a minute?” she said.

“Lots of them.”

“It’s time I had a cigarette break. Meet me outside, will you?”

She walked over to the owner of the joint, the guy with the mustache. He didn’t seem too happy about her leaving him alone with the rock ’n’ rollers. I watched through the plate-glass window as he pulled a sour face. And then, like most bosses, he let her go anyway. She was lighting a cigarette as she stepped outside. She leaned against the brick wall of the next-door building and said, “Phew!” She blew out a stream of smoke. “I’m glad you came, Curt,” she said. “Those kids were beginning to get in my hair.”

I blinked at the darkness. “I really came to ask more questions,” I said.

“I don’t care why you’re here. You’re here, that’s all that counts.”

We were quiet again until she asked, “Are you any closer to him?”

“Not really,” I said. “I wanted to ask you more about him. Did she ever say anything that would …”

“Nothing, Curt. She talked about him like … well, you know how kids are. As if he were a knight or something. You know. She talked to me a lot. We hit it off right from the beginning. Those things happen sometimes.”

“Yeah,” I said. Donna knew nothing more about Freddie. Nothing.

This was the end of the trail. Curtain. Freddie was still a blank face with the hands of a strangler. Nothing more. I was ready to call it quits.

“I went over to her because she looked kind of lonely the first night she came in. We got to chatting and before the night was over we’d exchanged phone numbers. Never used them, but …”

“You still have the number?”

“Why, yes. I think so. Somewhere in my purse. She wrote it on a napkin.”

“You’d better let me have it,” I said. That was the coward’s way of doing it. I’d call Rudy and break it to him over the phone. Tell him I’d done my damnedest but I was tired and beaten, and the police would have to do the rest.

Donna sighed. “Now? I thought we might …”

“Now,” I said.

“I’ll be right back.”

She walked into the rectangle of light cast by the open door of the store and then stepped inside. She was back in a few minutes with her purse and the napkin. “Here it is, You’re not going, are you?”

“I have to make a call.”

“This is getting to be a habit, I know, but come back, Curt. This time I mean it. Please come back.”

“You didn’t mean it last time?”

She shrugged and smiled wistfully. “You know how it is. Come back to me, Curt. Come back.”

I left her standing in the amber rectangle of light, and I walked to the nearest candy store and settled myself in the booth. I looked at the numbers written on the napkin with a ballpoint pen, and then began to dial. Halfway through, it occurred to me that Rudy wouldn’t be home, not if he left for work at four-thirty in the afternoon. I finished dialing anyway, looking down at the scrawled numbers.

And all at once it hit, just like that, and I hung up quickly.

It made me a little sick, but it also made me feel a little better because it was all over now.

I was waiting for Freddie.

It was close to one-thirty in the morning, and the streets were deserted. Spring had retreated into a cold fog that clouded the lights from the lampposts and swirled underfoot like elusive ghosts.

I waited until he came around the corner of the big building, carrying his flashlight and his time clock. I listened to the clack of his heels against the sidewalk. The fog lifted a misty barrier between us, and he didn’t see me until he was almost on me.

“Hello, Freddie,” I said.

“Wh …” He stared at me.

He backed away a few paces, and his hand went to his mouth. He recognized me then, blinked his eyes several times, and said, “Curt. What are you doing here at this hour?”

“Waiting. Waiting for you.”

“Curt …”

“You’re a son of a bitch, Rudy,” I said.

“Curt …”

“She looked just the way your wife did at that age, didn’t she, Rudy? Isn’t that what you told me?”

“Curt, you’ve got this all wrong.”

“I’ve got it all right, Rudy. Why didn’t you leave her alone? Why couldn’t you leave her alone, you bastard?”

“Curt, listen to me …”

“Why’d you hire me? Because you knew I was a stumblebum? Because your wife was hounding hell out of you to get a detective? Because you figured Curt Cannon was a drunkard who couldn’t solve his way out of a pay toilet? Is that why?”

“No, Curt. I came to you because …”

“Shut up, Rudy! Shut your filthy mouth before I close it for good. You didn’t have to kill her.”

He crumbled then. He leaned back against the wall, and his face slowly came apart. He raised a trembling hand to his mouth. His teeth chattered.

“What happened?” I asked. “Was she finally going to talk? Was she finally going to tell all about her mysterious lover? Was that it?”

Rudy closed his eyes, nodding.

“So you killed her. Snuffed her put, and then drove to Yonkers and dumped her there.”

“Stop it, Curt. Stop it! Please.”

“I’d never have found Freddie, Rudy. Never. But a friend of Betty’s gave me something in her handwriting, and I remembered something you’d showed me a while ago. The address of The Dewdrop, written in the same hand. And then I wondered why Betty had given you the address—and then I thought about your working hours and the time she always left the store. And then I realized why a seventeen-year-old kid was so anxious to keep her boy friend a secret. Why’d she give you the address, Rudy? Why?”

“She … she wanted me to … pick her up there at first. This was after it had started … after our first time … after the first time we knew we were in love. I told her it was dangerous, but she gave me the address and we tried it a … a few times. Then I suggested that she meet me here at the warehouse. We … we used to go inside … Curt, don’t look at me that way. I loved her, Curt.”

“Sure. You loved her enough to kill her. And you loved her enough to hire a wino to find Freddie. Freddie—a nice code name. A convenient tag in case the kid wanted to talk about her friend.” I bit down on my lip. “Was it you who sicked the cops on me? Did I scare you when I came up with the code name?”

“I … I called the cops. I told them you were practicing illegally.”

“You did it wrong, Rudy.”

“How could I tell my wife?” he said. “What could I do, Curt? Betty was ready to crack, ready to tell all of it. Curt, Curt, I had to. I … I used my hands. I … I did it without thinking. She … I just …” He stopped, and his voice broke, and suddenly he was crying. The fog swept in around us.

“What am I going to tell Madeline, Curt? What can I tell her?”

“She’s your wife,” I said.

He gripped my arms. “You tell her, Curt,” he pleaded. The tears rolled down his face, and he kept repeating “please” until I shook his hands from my arms.

“Sure,” I said. “Sure.”

I brought Rudy to Detective-Lieutenant Gunnisson, and I left fast. Then I bought a quart of wine, and I killed the whole God-damned thing before I worked up enough nerve to call Madeline and tell her about her husband.

It was hard.

And then I went home, and Madeline’s sobs were in my ears for a long time before I finally drank myself to sleep.

Good and Dead

He was a small man, small in stature and small in significance. Another bum, another wino, another panhandler. A nobody.

But he was Joey, and we’d shared the warmth of many a doorway together, tilted the remains of countless bottles of booze together, worked the Bowery from end to end like partners, like friends.

He was Joey, and he was dead.

He was tattered in death, as he had been in life. His clothes were baggy and ill-fitting, rumpled with the creases of park benches and cold pavements.

I stared down at him, and I thought small thoughts because thinking must always be a small thing in the presence of death.

“Shall we get the cops, Curt?” someone asked.

I nodded and kept looking at Joey and at the bright stain of blood on the side of his head where the bullet had entered.

Cooper Square, and the statue of Peter Cooper looking down with bronze aloofness, hemmed in by a grilled fence, surrounded by empty park benches. Cooper Square and a summer night as black as a raven’s wing, sprinkled with the dazzle of stars that Joey would never see again.

I felt empty.

“Why’d anyone want to kill a bum like Joey, Curt?” one of the boys asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. Across the street, the squat structure that was Cooper Union loomed into the sky. A boy and a girl hugged the shadows of the building, walking their way slowly toward the small park and the cluster of winos. There was a mild breeze in the air, a summer breeze that touched the skin with delicate feminine hands. There was a hum in the air, too, the hum of voices on fire escapes, of people crowding the streets, of the day dying as Joey had died.

And over the hum came the wail of a siren, and the winos faded back into the anonymity of the Bowery, blending with the shadows, merging with the pavements and the ancient buildings, turning their backs on the law.

I turned my back, too.

I walked away slowly as the siren got louder. I didn’t turn for another look. I didn’t want another look.

Chink was waiting for me outside the flophouse I’d called home for close to three months.

He was standing in the shadows, and I’d have missed him if he hadn’t whispered, “Curt?”

I stopped and peered into the darkened doorway. “Who’s that?”

“Me. Chink.”

“What is it?”

“You got a minute, Curt?”

“I’ve got a lifetime. What is it?”

“Joey.”

“What about him?”

“You were friends, no?”

I stared into the darkness, trying to see Chink’s face. It was rumored that he came originally from Shanghai and that he could speak twelve Chinese dialects. It was also rumored that he’d been a big man in China before he came to the States, that he’d come here because of a woman who’d two-timed him in the old country. That gave us a common bond.

“You were friends, weren’t you, Curt?”

“We were friends. So?”

“You know what happened?”

“I know he was killed.”

“Do you know why?”

“No.” I paused and stepped into the doorway, and there was the sickish smell of opium about Chink, overpowering in the small hallway. “Do you?”

“No.”

“Then why the hell are you wasting my time?”

“I got an idea, Curt.”

“I’m listening.”

“Are you interested?”

“What the hell are you driving at, Chink? Spit it out.”

“I think Joey was killed for some reason.”

“That’s brilliant, Chink. That’s real …”

“I mean, I don’t think this was just an ordinary mug and slug. You follow? This was a setup kill.”

“How do you figure?”

“I think Joey saw too much.”

“Go smoke your pipe, Chink,” I said. I started to shove past him. “Joey was usually too drunk to see his own hand in front of …”

“Harry Tse,” Chink said.

It sounded like Harry Shoe. “Who’s Harry Shoe?”

“He was killed the other night, Curt. You heard about it, didn’t you?”

“No.”

“They thought it was a tong job. Harry was big in his own tong.”

“What is this, Fu Manchu?”

“Don’t joke, Curt.”

“Okay, Chink, no jokes. What makes you think they tie?”

“Something Joey said when I told him about Harry.”

“When was this?”

“Yesterday. He said, ‘So that’s who it was.’”

“That doesn’t mean a damned thing, Chink.”

“Or it could mean a lot.”

“Stop being inscrutable. So it means a lot, or it means nothing. Who gives a rat’s backside?”

“I thought Joey was your friend.”

“He was. He’s dead now. What do you want me to do? The cops are already on it.”

“You used to be a shamus.”

“Used to be, is right. No more. Joey’s dead. The cops’ll get his killer.”

“You think so? They’re already spreading talk he fell and cracked his head, even though there’s a bullethole in him. They say he was drunk. You think they’re gonna give a damn about one bum more or less.”

“But you do, huh, Chink? You give a damn.”

“I do.”

“Why? What difference does it make to you?”

“Joey was good to me.” His voice trailed off. “He was good to me, Curt.” There was a catch in his voice, as if he were awed by the idea of anybody being good to him.

“The good die young,” I said. “Let me by, Chink. I need some sleep.”

“You’re … you’re not going to do anything about it?”

“I guess not. Maybe I’ll think about it, though. I don’t know. Good night, Chink.”

I started up the stairs and Chink yelled, “He was your friend, too, Curt. Just remember that. Just remember it.”

“Sure,” I said.

It took me a long time to forget it. I still hadn’t forgotten by the time I fell asleep.

The morning was hot and sticky. My shirt stuck to my back and my skin was feverish. I wanted to crawl out of it like a snake. I dug up a bottle of wine, taking four drinks before one would stay down. I faced the morning then, blinking at the fiery sun, wishing for a beach, or a mountain lake, or even a breeze. There was none. There were only the baking pavements. I started walking, heading for Chinatown because things can look different in the blaze of a new day.

I found Chink. He was lying on a pad, and there was opium in his eyes and in the slack tilt of his mouth.

He looked up at me sleepily, and then grinned blandly. “Hello, Curt.”

“This Harry Shoe—” I began.

“Harry Tse.”

“Yeah. Any survivors?”

“His wife. Lotus Tse. Why, Curt? You going to do something? You going to get Joey’s killer?”

“Where is she? Tse’s wife.”

“On Mott Street. Here, Curt. I’ll give you the address.” He reached behind him for a brush, dipped it into a pot of ink and scrawled an address on a piece of brown paper. “Tell her I sent you, Curt. Tell her Charlie Loo sent you.”

“Is that your name?”

He nodded.

“All right, Charlie. I’ll see you.”

“Good luck, Curt.”

“Thanks.”

I knocked on the door and waited, and then I knocked again.

“Who is it?” The voice had a singsong lilt, like a mild breeze rustling through a willow tree. It brought pictures of an ancient China, a land of delicate birds and eggshell skies, colorful kimonos and speckled white stallions.

“I’m a friend of Charlie Loo,” I said to the closed door.

“Moment.”

I waited a few more minutes, and when the door opened I was glad I had. She was small, with shiny black hair that tumbled to her shoulders, framing an oval face. Her eyes tilted sadly, brown as strong coffee, fringed with soot-black lashes. She had a wide mouth, and she wore a silk blouse and a skirt that hugged her small, curving hips.

“Yes, please?”

“May I come in?”

“All right.” The singsong made it sound like a question. She stepped aside, and I walked into the apartment, through a pair of beaded drapes, into a living room that was cool with the shade of the building that crowded close to the open window.

“My name is Curt Cannon,” I said.

“You are a friend of Charlie’s?”

“Yes.”

“I see. Sit down, Mr. Cannon.”

“Thank you.” I slouched into an easy chair, clenched my hands over my knees. “Your husband, Mrs. Tse. What do you know about his death?”

Her eyes widened a little, but her face remained otherwise expressionless. “Is that why you are here?”

“Yes.”

She shrugged small shoulders. “He … was killed. Is there more to say?”

“How?”

“A knife.”

“When?”

“Tuesday night.”

“Today is Friday,” I said, thinking aloud.

“Is it?” she asked. There was such a desperate note in her voice that I looked up suddenly. She was not watching me. She was staring through the open window at the brick wall of the opposite building.

“Do you have any idea who did it?”

“The tong, they say. I don’t know.”

“You don’t think it was a tong?”

“No. No, I don’t think so. I … I don’t know what to think.”

“What did your husband do?”

“Export-import. His business was good. He was a good man, my husband. A good man.”

“Any enemies?”

“No. No. I don’t know any.”

“Did he seem worried about anything?”

“No. He was happy.”

I took a deep breath. “Well, is there anything you can tell me? Anything that might help in …”

She shook her head, dangerously close to tears. “You … you do not understand, Mr. Cannon. Harry was a happy man. There was nothing. No reason. No … reason to kill him. None.”

I waited a moment before asking the next question. “Was he ever away from home? I mean, any outside friends? A club? Bowling team? Band? Anything like that?”

“Yes.”

“What?”

“A club. He went on Mondays. He was well liked.”

“What’s the name of the club?”

“Chinese Neighborhood Club. Incorporated, I think. Yes. It’s on Mulberry Street. I don’t know the address.”

“I’ll help find it,” I said, rising. “Thank you, Mrs. Tse. I appreciate your help.”

“Are you looking for Harry’s murderer, Mr. Cannon?”

“I think so.”

Her eyes were dry as she made a movement of dismissal.

The Chinese Neighborhood Club, Inc., announced itself to the sidewalk by means of a red-and-black-lettered sign swinging on the moist summer breeze. A narrow entrance-way huddled beneath the sign, and two Chinese stood alongside the open doorway, talking softly, their Panamas tilted back on their heads. They glanced at me as I started up the long narrow stairway.

The stairwell was dark. I followed the creaking steps, stopping at a landing halfway up. There were more steps leading to another landing, but I decided I’d try the door on this landing first. I didn’t bother to knock. I took the knob, twisted it, and the door opened.

The room was almost unfurnished. There was a long curtained closet on one wall, and an easy chair just inside the doorway. A long table ran down the center of the room. A man was seated at the table. A stringed instrument looking very much like a small harp, rested on the table before him. The man had the withered parchment face of a Chinese mandarin. He held two sticks with felted tips in his hands. A small boy with jet-black hair stood alongside the table. They both looked up as I came into the room.

“Yes?” the old man asked.

“I’m looking for friends of Harry Tse.”

“Okay,” the old man said. He whispered something to the boy, and the kid tossed me a darting glance and then went out the door through which I’d entered. The door closed behind him, and I sat in the easy chair while the old man began hitting the strings of his instrument with the two felted sticks. The music was Old China. It twanged on the air in discordant cacophony, strangely fascinating, harsh on the ears, but somehow soothing. It droned on montonously in small staccato bursts that vibrated the strings, set the air humming.

The sticks stopped, and the old man looked up.

“You who?” he asked.

“Curt Cannon.”

“Yes. Mmm, yes.”

He went back to his instrument. The room was silent except for the twanging of the strings. I closed my eyes and listened, remembering a time when Toni and I had found the wonder of Chinatown, found it for our very own. That had been a happy time, with our marriage as bright as the day outside. That had been before I’d found her in Parker’s arms, before I’d smashed in his face with the butt of my 45, before Curt Cannon had drifted to the Bowery along with the other derelicts, just another guy who didn’t give a damn any more.

I listened to the music, and I thought of the liquor I’d consumed since then, the bottles of sour wine, the smoke, the canned heat. I thought of the flophouses and the hallways and the park benches and the gutters and the stink and filth of the Bowery. A pretty picture, Curt Cannon. A real pretty picture.

Like Joey.

Only Joey was dead, really dead. I was only close to it.

The music stopped. There was the bare room again, and the old man, and the broken memories.

“Is someone coming to talk to me?” I asked.

“You go up,” the old man said. “Upstairs. You go. Someone talk to you.”

“Thanks,” I said.

I went into the hallway, wondering why the old man had sent the kid up ahead of me. Probably a natural distrust of Westerners. Whoever was up there had been warned that an outsider was in the house. I climbed the steps and found another doorway at the landing.

I opened the door.

The room was filled with smoke. There were at least a dozen round tables in the room, and each table was crowded with seated Chinese. There was a small wooden railing that separated the large room from a small office with a desk. A fat man sat at the desk with his back to me. The kid who’d been downstairs was standing alongside him. I turned my back to the railing and the desk, and looked into the room. A few of the men looked up, but most went on with what I supposed were their games.

The place was a bedlam of noise. Each man sitting at the tables held a stack of tiles before him. As far as I could gather, the play went in a clockwise motion, with each player lifting a tile and banging it down on the table as he shouted something in Chinese. I tried to get the gist of the game, but it was too complicated. Every now and then, one man would raise a pointed stick and push markers across wires stretched over the tables, like the markers in a poolroom. A window stretched across the far end of the room, and the group of men at a table near the window were the quietest in the room. They were playing cards and from a distance it looked like good, old-fashioned poker.

I turned away from them and stared at the back of the man seated at the desk. I cleared my throat.

He swung his chair around, grinning broadly, exposing a gold tooth in the front of his mouth.

“Hello, hello,” he said.

I gestured over my shoulder with my head. “What’s that? Mah-jongg?”

He peered around as if he hadn’t seen the wholesale gaming. “Chinese game,” he said.

“Thanks,” I said. “Did Harry Tse play it?”

“Harry? No, Harry play poker. Far table. You know Harry?”

“Not exactly.”

The Chinese shook his head, and the fat of his chin waddled. “Harry dead.”

“I know.”

“Yes. Dead.” He shook his head again.

“Was he here last Monday night?”

“Oh, sure. He here every Monday.”

“Did he play poker?”

“Oh, sure. He always play. Harry good guy.”

“Who played with him?”

“Hmm?”

“Last Monday? Who was he playing with?”

“Why?”

“He was killed. Maybe one of his friends did it. Who did he play with?”

The fat Chinese stood up abruptly and looked at the far table. He nooded his head then. “Same ones. Always play poker. Only ones.” He pointed at the far table. “They play with Harry.”

“Thanks. Mind if I ask them a few questions?”

The fat Chinese shrugged, so I started into the room, passed the Mah-jongg tables, heading for the men playing poker. Four men were seated at the table. None of them looked up when I stopped alongside.

I cleared my throat.

A thin man with short black hair and a clean-shaven face looked up curiously. His eyes were slanted, the skin pulled tight at the corners. He held his cards before him in a wide fan.

“My name’s Cannon,” I said to him. “I understand Harry Tse was playing cards here the night before he was killed.”

“Yes?” the thin man asked.

“Are you the spokesman for the group?”

“I’ll do. What’s on your mind?”

“Who won Monday night?”

The thin man thought this over. He shrugged and turned to another player. “Who won, Tommy?”

Tommy was a husky boy with wide jowls. He shrugged. “I don’t remember, Lun.”

“That your name?” I asked the first guy.

“That’s right. Lun Ching.”

“Who won, Lun Ching?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Did Harry win?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Yes or no?”

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

Lun Ching stared at me. “Are you from the police?”

“No.”

He nodded his head imperceptibly. “Harry didn’t win. That’s enough for you.” He turned back to his cards, fished two from the fan and said to a player across the table, “Two cards.”

The dealer threw two cards onto the table, and Lun Ching reached for them. I reached at the same time, clamping my fingers onto his wrist.

“I’m not through yet, Lun.”

He shook his hand free, and shoved his chair back. “You better get the hell out of here, mac,” he said.

“Curt,” I corrected. “I want to know who won here Monday night. You going to tell me?”

“What difference does it make?”

“I want to know.”

Lun gestured impatiently with his head. “Tommy won.”

I turned to the husky, jowled Chinese. “Did you?”

“Yes.”

“How much?”

“A few bucks.”

“Did Harrry lose?”

“Yes.”

“How much?”

“I don’t know. Two, three dollars.”

“Who else won?”

“What?”

“You said you’d won a few bucks, Tommy. You also said Harry lost about three bucks. What did the rest of you do?”

Lun Ching stood up. “We broke even. Does that answer you?”

“Maybe,” I said. I turned and started across the room. Over my shoulder, I said, “I might come back.”

Someone from the table whispered, “Don’t hurry.”

I stopped at the desk behind the wooden railing, and the fat Chinese looked up.

“I don’t think I caught your name,” I said.

“Wong. Sam Wong.”

“Mr. Wong, did Harry leave here alone on Monday night?”

“Yes, he did.”

“Did he say where he was going? Did he have to meet anyone?”

“No. He didn’t say. I think he go home.”

“I see.”

Sam Wong looked at me curiously. “Harry no killed Monday night,” he said, his voice puzzled. “Harry killed Tuesday night.”

“I know,” I said. “That’s what’s bothering me.”

None of it fit.

I was banging my head against a stone wall, and I didn’t like the feeling. It wasn’t like the old days when someone shoved a fat retainer under my nose, held it out like a carrot to a rabbit, challenged me to find a missing husband or squelch a bit of blackmail.

There was no retainer. Only the thought of Joey lying dead in the small park, Joey about whom I knew practically nothing.

I thought of the last bottle I’d shared with Joey. We’d sat on the corner of my cot a few days back, drinking the fifth of Imperial, forgetting the heated streets outside, forgetting everything but the driving desire to get blind, stinking drunk.

Now Joey was dead, and Charlie had suggested a tie-in between that and the death of Harry Tse, a man I didn’t know at all. A sensible guy would have called it a day. A sensible guy would have said, “All right, you stupid bastard, your first idea was wrong. Harry Tse didn’t win any money, and that’s not why he was killed. There was another reason, and it wasn’t a cheating wife because her love is stamped all over her face. So give it up and forget it.”

I’d stopped being sensible a long time ago. I’d stopped the night I took Parker’s face apart.

I started walking through Chinatown, looking for an idea. I passed the windows crammed with herbs and roots, with fish and spice and fowl. I passed the other windows brimming with sandals and kimonos and jade and beads and boxes and figurines and fans. I passed the newstands displaying Chinese periodicals and newspapers. I passed the restaurants, upstairs, downstairs, level with the street. I passed them all in a miasma of heat that clung to the narrow streets like a living thing.

And no idea came.

The heat stifled thought. It crawled around the open throat of my shirt, spread sweat across my back muscles. It was too hot to walk, and too hot to think, and too damned hot to do anything but sidle up to a beer glass beaded with cold drops.

But I had to think, so I forced the heat out of my mind and I tried to remember what Mrs. Tse had told me about her husband.

Export-import.

I stopped at the nearest candy store, waded through two dozen Tses in the phone book and finally located his business address, right in the center of Chinatown where I’d hoped it would be. I sighed against the heat, wiped the sweat from my forehead and headed for his office.

It was upstairs. A small unimportant office with an important-looking title on the door: Harry Tse: Exports—Imports. I tried the knob, half-expecting the office to be closed. The door opened, and I found myself in a small reception room. A desk hugged the wall, and a Chinese girl hugged the desk. She looked up when I came in, her sloe eyes frankly appraising me.

She was dressed like any girl you’d see in the subway, maybe even more so. She was small, the way most Chinese women are, but there was nothing-slight or delicate about her. The dress clinging to her was green silk, and it slashed low between her breasts, ending in a rhinestone clip somewhere above her naval. The only make-up she wore was a splash of lipstick across her full mouth.

“My name is Curt Cannon,” I said.

A spark of interest flickered in her eyes, died, and then rekindled itself to smolder like a burning coal.

“Yes?” She wet her lips with the tip of her tongue. “May I help you, sir?”

“Mrs. Tse sent me,” I lied. “What do you know about her husband?”

“You’re investigating his murder?”

“More or less,” I said. She looked at me dubiously and then she shrugged. The open V of her blouse moved a fraction of an inch. I stared at her, but her eyes met mine frankly and levelly.

“I don’t know anything about his murder.”

“What about his habits?”

“What about them?”

“Do you know where he was going on the night he was killed?”

“Yes. One of his clients lives on West Seventy-second Street. I think he was going there. In fact, I’m sure he was.”

“What’s your job here?”

“Receptionist, secretary, all-around girl.”

“What does that include?”

“Just what it sounded like.” She arched one eyebrow onto her forehead. “Harry was married. I know his wife, and I respect her.”

“I see.”

“Harry was walking up to Fourteenth for some air. Before he left the office, he told me that. He never reached the subway on Fourteenth. He was killed outside Cooper Union.”

“Where Joey was killed,” I said.

“Who? Oh, yes, Joey. Charlie Loo’s friend.”

“You knew Joey?”

“No.” She swung her legs out from the desk, and her skirt rode up over her knees. She glanced down at the skirt, but didn’t move to touch it. “No, I didn’t know Joey. Charlie told me about what he’d said, though. He figured there might be a connection.”

“Do you think so?”

She shrugged again, and this time the V moved more than a fraction of an inch. She kept talking, her hands caressing the rhinestone clip at the point of the V. “I don’t know. I passed it on to Mrs. Tse. She said she was going to look up Charlie and get him to point out this Joey person to her. She said she wanted to ask him what he’d seen.”

“When was this?”

“Yesterday, I think. I don’t really remember. There’s been so damned much confusion around here …” She stopped abruptly and suddenly crossed her legs. She leaned over and took off one of her high heels, and the V of her dress just didn’t give one good goddam any more. “New shoes,” she said. “Tight.”

I stood up and walked to the desk. She lifted her head to look up at me, and she wet her lips again.

“Honey,” I said, “you’re looking for trouble.”

When her voice came, it was low and steady. “Maybe I want trouble. It gets boring sitting around here all alone all day.”

I considered this and then turned for the door. She rose like a cat, crossing the room before me, and trying to flatten herself against the door. She tried, but she didn’t succeed, because a body like that would have trouble flattening itself against anything.

“Come on,” I said, “cut the dramatics. I’m leaving.”

With a quick movement, she turned and snapped the lock on the door. When she turned back to me, the rhinestone clip was gone. She tossed it up and down on the palm of her hand, and the movement of her shoulders and her body rippled the front of the dress.

There was the age-old look on her face, the look that had been spawned before Man knew how to build a fire. She took a step closer and I suddenly forgot all about the heat and Joey and Harry and everybody and everything in the world. There was only the tilt of her eyes and the moistness of her mouth, and then she was in my arms and I buried my lips in her throat and listened to the hum of traffic and people outside.

I left her much later and went down to the street again. I started walking, and I’d walked for two blocks before I realized I was being followed. I quickened my pace, and the sweat sprang out all over my body. I followed the narrow, twisting streets, ducking into an alley and sprinting for the other end. I hadn’t counted on my followers knowing Chinatown better than I did.

I almost smashed into them at the other end of the alley.

I had a chance to recognize Lun Ching and his pal Tommy, and then a fist lashed out, surprisingly forceful for the thin man who threw it. I doubled over, feeling the heat and the drinking I’d done for a long time now.

“You son of a bitch,” Lun shouted.

I lifted my face in time to see the sap in his hand. Then the sap went up over his head and came down on the side of my neck, knocking me flat against one wall of the alley. I grabbed at the bricks for support, but the sap was up and down again, and this time it peeled back a half-inch of flesh from my cheek.

“You’re going to the morgue, you bastard,” Lun said. He brought back the sap, and this time I fell to my knees and Tommy kicked me quickly and expertly. Lun bent over me and the sap became a sledge hammer now, up and down, hitting me everywhere, on my shoulders, my face, my upraised hands and arms.

“Break up the card game, will you? Come acting tough, huh?”

And always the sap, up and down, viciously pounding me closer and closer to the cement until my head was touching it and Tommy’s kick to my temple made everything black.

The brick wall was a mile high. It stretched out above me and leaned dangerously against the sky. I watched it, wondering when it would fall, and after a while I realized it wasn’t going to fall at all.

I stumbled to my knees then and touched the raw pain that was my face. I ached everywhere, and I ached more when I remembered Lun and Tommy. But I wasn’t angry at them. They’d given me a hell of a beating, but they’d also given me an idea, and it was an idea any stupid bastard should have got all by himself. So I filed them away under unfinished business and stumbled my way out of the alley. Lun Ching had said I was going to the morgue, and he was right.…

It was cool.

I thanked the respite from the heat and followed the attendant down the long, gloomy corridor.

“This is it,” he said.

He pulled out the drawer and I looked down into Joey’s lifeless face, at the flabby, whisky-sodden features that even death could not remove.

“That’s him,” I said.

“Sure. I know it’s him,” the attendant answered, his voice echoing off the walls.

“I … I wondered about his personal effects.”

“You a relative?”

“No. I don’t think he had any relatives. I was his friend.”

“Mmmm.” The attendant considered this deeply. “Not a hell of a lot there, you know. Sent them all up to Homicide because they’re still investigating this. Got a list, though, and I can tell you what was on him.”

“I’d appreciate that.”

“Sure. No trouble at all.” I followed him to a desk at the end of the corridor. He sat down and picked up a clipboard, and then began flipping the pages. “Let’s see. Yeah, here he is, Joseph H. Gunder.”

I hadn’t even known Joey’s last name. The anonymity of the Bowery is almost complete.

“Yeah, he didn’t have much,” the attendant said. “Want me to read them off”

“Yes, please.”

“A dollar bill, and thirty-five cents in change. Want that broken down?”

“No, that’s fine.”

“Okay. Let’s see. Handkerchief, switchblade, pint of Carstair’s almost empty, some rubber bands, package of Camels—two butts in it. Wallet with identification. That’s it.”

“A pint of Carstair’s?” I was thinking of the fifth of Imperial Joey had brought to me and how we’d killed it.

“Yep, that’s right.”

“And … and a switchblade?”

“Yeah.” He nodded his head.

“And money, too?”

“Say, you want me to repeat the whole damned list?”

“No that’s fine. Thanks.” I paused. “Did they decide what killed him?”

“Sure. Hole in the head. Want to see him again?”

“No. I meant, what caliber pistol?”

“Twenty-two. Why?”

“Just curious. I’ll be going.”

“Okay, mister. Drop in again some time.”

I walked out into the sunshine, away from the moldering bodies. The beginning had been in the morgue then, and I owed Lun Ching a debt. But the end was somewhere else, and I headed there now.

The door opened when I knocked and gave my name.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I just came across something.”

“That’s all right.”

“May I come in?”

“Certainly.”

I followed her into the living room again, and I sat down in the same easy chair. I didn’t look at the floor or my clenched hands this time. I looked directly at her.

“Ever walk through the Bowery, Mrs. Tse?”

Her yes were still troubled. She looked at the world through brown curtains that hid the hurt inside her. “Yes.”

“Often?”

“I know the neighborhood.”

“Do you own a gun, Mrs. Tse?”

She hesitated. “Why … yes. Yes, I do.”

“A Twenty-two, maybe?”

She hesitated again, for a long time. She sighed deeply then and lifted her eyes to mine. There was no expression on her face, and her tone was flat. “You know,” she said.

“I know.”

She nodded her head aimlessly. “He deserved what he got.”

“Joey?”

“Yes. Yes, Joey. He was—your friend, wasn’t he?”

“My drinking companion, Mrs. Tse. A man doesn’t get to know much about anyone on the Bowery. Nor about what makes them tick.”

“How did you know? How did you know I … killed him?”

“A few things. A bottle of Imperial, for one. When Joey brought it to me, I never thought to ask where he’d got the money for it. That kind of money doesn’t come easy to a bum. When I saw his stuff at the morgue, there was another pint there, and more money. I knew then that Joey had hit it rich recently—and his switchblade told me how.”

“Harry was stabbed,” she said tonelessly.

“Sure. Joey didn’t even know who his victim was. When Charlie mentioned it to him, Joey was probably drunk. He said, ‘So that’s who it was,’ without even thinking. Charlie thought he’d seen only your husband’s murderer. He didn’t know Joey was the murderer.”

“And me? How did you come to me?”

“A guess, and a little figuring. A Twenty-two is a woman’s gun.”

“I have a permit,” she said. “I go through the Bowery often. Harry thought … he thought I should have one.”

“What happened, Mrs. Tse? Do you want to tell me?”

“All right.” She paused. “All right. Charlie pointed out your … friend to me. I followed him when I left Charlie and I caught up with him in Cooper Square. I asked him what he’d meant by ‘So that’s who it was.’ He got terribly frightened. He said he hadn’t meant to kill Harry. I think he was drunk. I don’t know. He said he’d asked Harry for a dime and Harry had refused. He’d pulled a knife and when Harry had started to yell, he stabbed him. For a … a dime … he stabbed him.”

“Go on.”

“I couldn’t believe it, Mr. Cannon. For a dime! I took the gun out of my purse and I just shot him. Only once. Just once. Because he’d stabbed Harry, you see.”

“Yes, I understand.”

“I shot him,” she repeated.

Her voice echoed in the living room, and silence carried it to the walls. She looked up after a while, and her voice was very small now.

“Will you … will you take me to the police?”

“No,” I said.

“But …”

I got to my feet. “Mrs. Tse,” I said, “we’ve never even met.”

I walked to the door, leaving her in the living room that faced a blank wall. I took the steps down to the street, leaving her alone because I, too, had lost someone I loved and I knew how it felt.

It was hot in the street.

But it was hot where Joey was, too.

The Death of Me

When money runs out, you have no choice. You leave the cheap hotel, you drift to the flophouse, then you try dark hallways, and finally you end up in the park, a New York City cowboy with a bench for a horse. It’s not too bad when the weather is mild. You curl up at night, and the stars are your blanket, and the concrete tombstones of the city reach their grubby fingers out to scratch the clouds, surrounding the patch of soil and grass, walling you in. When the weather begins to change, you wrap old newspapers around your chest and under your jacket. You stuff them up your trouser legs, and they help to cut the cold. They don’t help much against the rain.

You lie on the bench, and the steady drizzle wets you and chills you, and you think, This is Curt Cannon, and the thought makes you a little sick.

And then you wake up one morning, with autumn all around you, with the trees red and gold and the leaves rasping across the concrete walls like vagrant ghosts, and you discover you’re dead.

The newspaper was stuffed into the top of the trash basket. There were holes the size of half-dollars in the soles of my shoes, and the Daily News makes good stuffing. I snatched the paper, and I sat down on the bench. I was taking off my right shoe when the thick, black lettering on Page Four hit me between the eyes. It jolted me, and I immediately thought it was some sort of coincidence, but then I began reading, and the jolt gave way to cold anger.

CURT CANNON MURDERED

Curtis J. Cannon, the ex-private detective whose license was revoked last year after the brutal pistol-whipping he adminstered to his wife’s alleged lover, was found dead late yesterday afternoon in the hallway of the Sunrise Hotel on the Bowery. Police gave the cause of death as six .45-caliber bullets fired at close range into Cannon’s face. Identification was made by Avery Peggett, proprietor of the hotel, who recognized many items among the dead man’s effects. Police officials were puzzled …

There was more, but I didn’t bother with it. It burned me—clear down to the holes in my shoes. Piggy Peggett had identified the body. That made it rum-dandy. Piggy wore bifocals, and identifying a stumblebum from his effects is like identifying the Sahara from a grain of sand. It didn’t smell right. It was one thing being close to dead, but it was another to be called dead when you were reasonably alive and kicking.

I tore the newspaper into the right size. I stuffed both shoes with it, and then I started for the Bowery and Piggy Peggett.

He was surprised to see me. His face went white, and his hands began trembling on the desk counter. He looked around him, as if he expected help, and then he swallowed hard and peered through the thick lenses of his glasses.

“Hello, Piggy,” I said.

“Curt … I … you …”

“I’m dead, huh, Piggy? You identified me from my effects, huh, Piggy? What effects, you son …”

“Curt …”

I reached across the counter and grabbed a handful of jacket and shirt. The sweat poured from Piggy’s face and down over the open collar of his shirt.

“What’s the pitch, Piggy? Make it good, or you’ll be wearing those glasses around your liver.”

“I thought it was you, Curt. I swear to Christ, I thought …”

“I moved out of this fleabag three months ago, Piggy.”

“I know, Curt. But the guy looked just like …”

“What would I be doing in your roach-infested hallway, Piggy?”

“Who stops to think, Curt? The cops asked me …”

I pulled him forward, ramming his stomach against the counter. “The truth, Piggy!”

“S’help me, that’s it, Curt. There’s a stiff in the hallway, and the cops ask me do I know him. I go down, and I look at the stuff they fish from his wallet. There’s a handkerchief, too, with a C in the corner. I figure it’s you, Curt. A guy can make a mistake. A guy …”

I released his collar, and I backhanded him across the face. The fat flesh wiggled and shook, and Piggy’s eyes went wide with fright.

“The truth, you son of a bitch. All of it. You spout any more lies, and you’ll be the next guy they find in the hallway.”

Piggy was shaking all over now, and the smell of fear mingled with the smell of his perspiration.

“Okay, Curt. Okay.”

“What?”

“This guy … this guy comes to me …”

“What guy?”

“I never see him before, Curt. A stranger. A mean-looking character. A blue pin-stripe suit. Small mustache. I never see him before. He ain’t just one of the winos, Curt.”

“I’m listening.”

“He comes with a roll could choke a horse. He stuffs the roll under my nose. He says, ‘Point out Cannon, the roll is yours.’ I never even see him before this, Curt.”

“How much money?”

“Close to three bills, Curt. That’s a nice chunk of lettuce.”

“So?”

“So I ask him why he wants Cannon.”

“You’re lying, Piggy.”

Piggy began shaking again. “All right, so I don’t ask him. I don’t ask him nothing. He has to go, and he says he’ll be back later, and he wants me to finger … to point out Cannon then. He wants to know how he can get to Forty-seventh and Broadway from here, so I figure him for a greenie, and I also figure he won’t know Cannon from a hole in the wall. Three bills is a lot of lettuce …”

“So what happened when he came back?”

“By this time, I do a lot of thinking. The dapper comes back, and I tell him sure I’ll show him Cannon. I take him downstairs to a wino’s been flopping in my hallway for Christ knows how long. I finger the guy, and I say, ‘That’s Cannon.’ Then I get the hell upstairs fast.”

“You’re a rotten bastard, Piggy. Who’d you finger? Whose death warrant did you sign?”

“Some bum, Curt. Who knows? Curt, what’s another bum more or less? Curt, three bills is a lot of …”

I hauled off, sinking my fist into three inches of Piggy’s stomach. He backed up against the wall, his face going purple.

“Why’d you tell the cops the corpse was me?”

Piggy gasped for breath. “To … protect my investment, Curt. This … this guy looked mean. I had to follow all the way through.”

“You know what I’m gonna do, Piggy?”

“Wh-what, Curt?”

“I’m gonna find the guy who wants me dead. I’m gonna find him and tell him you deliberately fingered the wrong man. I’m gonna beat him black and blue, and then I’m gonna send him back here.”

“Curt …”

“So long, Piggy.”

I left him huddled against the wall, his eyes saucer-wide and the fat shivering on his bones. I took the steps fast, coming out of the dark hallway into bright sunshine. I squinted against the sun, blinked my eyes. There was a long black Buick parked at the curb. The front door opened. A big guy in a green sports jacket stepped onto the curb and started walking toward me. There was a bulge under his armpit, and the bulge spelled trouble. I started walking in the opposite direction.

He quickened his pace and pulled up alongside me. I thought he was a bull at first, and I didn’t want any more trouble with the cops, especially after that killing in Piggy’s hallway. I kept walking without turning my head.

“I’ll say this once, Cannon,” the guy whispered. “There’s a Thirty-eight under my arm. I know how to use it. You take another step and the worms get a feast.”

I stopped and turned to look at him. He was very big, with a beefy face covered with freckles. He wore sunglasses, and I pegged him for a hophead, but maybe his eyes were just weak.

“What’s the pitch?” I asked.

“You turn and walk toward the Buick. The Thirty-eight still goes. We’ll talk later.”

“You’re holding the aces,” I said.

“In spades. Move, Cannon.”

I walked to the Buick, and the big guy opened the door for me. I piled onto the front seat, glancing at the thin driver, who didn’t even turn his head. The big guy squeezed in on my right, and the minute he slammed the door behind him, the car leaped into motion.

“Do I get it now or later?” I asked.

“Relax,” the big guy said.

That was all. But there was something about the tone of his voice that told me this wasn’t going to be a shooting party. I sat back and relaxed, and the Buick worked its way west, nosing through late-morning traffic. We turned right on Broadway, heading uptown, and finally pulled up in front of a brownstone on West Seventy-third.

“This is it, Cannon.” The big guy opened the door, and I followed him to the curb. The driver moved over to my right, and we started up the steps together. The driver rang, two shorts and a long, and the door clicked open.

“Upstairs,” the big guy said.

We started up the inside steps. A third guy met us on the first-floor landing. “The shamus?” he asked.

“Yeah,” the driver said.

“Charlie’s waiting. Go right in.”

They took me to the last door in the corridor, opened it and allowed me to enter first. The room was nicely furnished with a lot of leather chairs and a leather-topped desk. One wall was covered with floor-to-ceiling bookcases that boasted a nice selection of books, all dusty. A gray-haired man sat behind the desk, a cigar in his mouth. He rolled the cigar between his lips, and studied me carefully. I wasn’t looking at him. I was looking at the blonde draped in one of the leather chairs. She wore a woolen dress that started at the hollow of her throat, swept down over the rich curve of her breasts, hugged her waist. Her legs were tucked up under her, and her knees and a little more showed where the dress ended. She’d kicked off her shoes, and they rested on the floor below her. Her head was bent slightly, the blonde hair falling over one cheek. Her deep brown eyes looked at me sleepily.

“Cannon?” the man behind the desk asked. There was an impatience in his voice, as if he resented my too-careful scrutiny of the blonde.

“Cannon,” I answered.

“Charles Semmler.”

“I thought you were still on Riker’s Island, Semmler.”

His eyes narrowed and his mouth tightened and then relaxed into a smile. “You know me, huh, Cannon?”

“I know you. How many children did you corrupt this week?”

“Don’t get smart, Cannon. I’m doing you a favor.”

“The free ride? Thanks a million.”

“That bum they found with the holes in his head—could have been you.”

“Was the pin-striped gunsel one of your boys?”

“No. He’s an out-of-towner. His name’s Buck Grafton. Does that ring a bell?”

“No.”

“Does Benny Malloy ring a bell?”

“It starts a symphony. What’s the tie-in?”

“You remember Benny, huh?”

“I remember him. I gave the testimony that sent him to Elmira. That was five years ago. What’s the tie-in?”

“Benny’s still chopping rocks. Buck Grafton ain’t. Benny asked him to look you up.”

“The dead bum in the hallway?”

“A present from Benny.”

“A nice gift.”

“Sure. It would have been nicer, but it was delivered to the wrong person.”

“That takes a lot of figuring. What do you want from me, Semmler?”

“A favor.”

“I thought you were doing me the favor?”

“A mutual favor, then. It works out nicely.”

“I’m listening,” I said.

“All right, here it is. As far as Grafton knows, he potted the right pigeon. He ain’t looking for Cannon any more. He’ll be heading back for Chi soon … unless he finds out you’re still alive.”

“So?”

“He can find out very easily.”

“I’m still listening. I haven’t heard anything yet.”

“There’s a guy we want out of the way. He’s on the Bowery. If I send someone in after him, we’ll never get him. If you do the job, we’ll make it worth your while. Besides, we’ll guarantee Grafton is on the next plane to Chi.”

“Who’s the guy?”

“You don’t know him.”

“Why do you want him rubbed?”

“That’s my business.”

“Fine, keep it that way. I don’t want any part of a blast job.”

“You’re in no position, Cannon.”

“No? What makes you think Grafton scares me? Before you picked me up, I was on my way to look for him. He’ll find out I’m still alive, all right, and I’ll be the one to tell him.”

“Maybe, by the time you get to tell him, you won’t be so alive.”

“So that’s it.”

“That’s it. Curt Cannon is already dead. The police got enough worries without another Cannon stiff turning up. We got nothing to lose. Besides, the cops ain’t too interested in dead bums.”

“You must take me for a meathead, Semmler. Suppose I agree? Suppose I say sure, I’ll gun your man for you? What’s to stop me from walking out of here and getting lost?”

“Don’t be stupid, Cannon. The Bowery ain’t that big. The world ain’t that big! I could send ten men out and have you in a half-hour.”

“If these ten guys are so hot, why don’t you send them after this character you want so bad?”

“He knows all my boys. When the rumble gets out, it’ll be like looking for a needle.”

“There are out-of-town boys.”

“This guy ain’t worth an import job.”

“What about Buck Grafton? He’s on the spot, and he’s just whiling his time away killing people, it seems.”

“He’s out.”

“Why?”

“That’s my business.”

“When you ask me to gun someone, it becomes my business, too. Why can’t Grafton do the job for you?”

“He’s working for a Chi syndicate. I don’t want no outsider shooting up my territory. It sets a bad precedent. Besides, he don’t know the Bowery like you do.”

“You’ve got a problem, haven’t you?”

“What do you say, Cannon?”

“I say I don’t work for punks.”

There was a dead silence. Semmler’s face went white; his knuckles tightened on the desk top. Rage showed in his face, and I tensed myself for whatever was coming next.

“Hooray!” the voice said.

I turned quickly. The blonde was struggling out of the big leather chair. She put her feet down, and the woollen dress rode up to her thighs. She pushed herself up and weaved across the room. She was loaded to the eyeballs. She staggered over to me, stopped about a foot away, and stood there weaving uncertainly.

“Hooray,” she said. “Hooray for a man with guts.” Her breath rushed against my face, strong with alcohol fumes.

“Shut up, Sheila,” Semmler said.

She flicked her wrist at him. “Oh, shut up yourself.”

Semmler was up and around the desk in three seconds flat. He took two quick steps that brought him alongside the blonde, and then he raised his arm up over his head. I started to move forward, but I was too late. His hand whipped down, catching the blonde on the side of her jaw. She staggered back and fell to the rug, and Semmler leaned over her, his arm cutting back and forth like a scythe. The girl screamed and tried to wriggle away from the flailing arm. Her dress rode all the way up as she backed away on the rug, showing long, smooth legs and gartered stocking tops. Semmler lifted his arm again, and I stepped in and grabbed it when it came up over his head. I pulled back, yanking him off balance, and he whirled abruptly, his free hand snaking in under his jacket. I droppped his arm when I saw the small, black .32 in his fist.

“You’re playing games with the wrong party, Cannon,” he said tightly.

The girl whimpered. She lay on the floor with her dress up on her hips, the lace of sheer black panties showing where the dress ended. “Charlie …” she started.

“Shut up, Sheila.” Semmler tilted the automatic up toward my face. “What do you say, Cannon? Make it the right answer this time.”

There’s only one answer when a man is holding a gun on you and there’s kill-light in his eyes. It’s always the same answer because life is something to cling to, even when it’s a life like mine. I looked at the bore of the .32 and asked, “Who’s your man, Semmler?”

“That’s smart, Cannon.” He smiled, but he held the .32 steady. He kept the gun on me as he walked over to his desk, opened a drawer and reached into it. He dropped a glossy photograph on the desk top. “There he is. I want him.”

“Dead.”

“Dead,” Semmler repeated.

I looked at the picture. It was a bust shot, showing the guy’s head and shoulders. He was a typical hood, with a thin face, thickly lidded eyes and a sneering mouth. I studied the picture and wondered if I wouldn’t be doing the public a service.

“I’ll need money,” I said.

Semmler reached into the desk drawer again. “Here’s twenty. Don’t spend it in the nearest bar. You got a rod?”

“No.”

Semmler opened another drawer and tossed a .45 onto the desk. “The clip in the gun is empty,” he said. “Don’t get ideas. Put the gun into your right-hand pocket.”

I did that, and then Semmler tossed two full clips onto the desk top. “The left-hand pocket.”

I pocketed the clips and said, “Well, I’ll get in touch with you.”

“I’ll get in touch with you,” Semmler corrected. “Where are you staying?”

I looked at the girl again. She had pulled her dress down and was sitting up. Her cheeks were red with the marks of Semmler’s vicious slapping. Her eyes met mine, and there was a mute pleading in them.

“I’d better keep away from any hotel on the Bowery,” I said. “There’s a joint on Fourteenth. Hotel Paul. I’ll be there.”

Semmler nodded. “You’d better deliver, Cannon.”

I had no intention of even looking for the guy. I shacked up at the Hotel Paul because I expected the blonde, and I wanted to know more about the whole rotten setup. I’d made sure she caught the name of the hotel I’d be in, and if the answering look in her eyes had meant anything, she’d show up sooner or later. I bought a jug of rye with four bucks out of Semmler’s double sawbuck, and I stretched out on the bed and prepared to get reasonably blind. The knock on the door came sooner than I’d expected.

I put down the bottle of rye, got up and opened the door a crack. It wasn’t the blonde. I opened the door wider.

The girl standing there was tall. The top of her brunette head was level with my eyes, and I’m no midget. She was wearing a tight sweater and skirt. Her hair was long, and she owned a face out of a picture book. I tabbed her for a girl from a poor neighborhood until I caught the whisky glaze in her eyes, and then I knew she was a Bowery fringer, and it wouldn’t be long before she was one of us. She walked right into the room and then closed the door, leaning back against it. She sucked in a deep breath.

“You’ve got the wrong room, sister,” I said. “I didn’t order anything.”

“You won’t get anything you didn’t order,” she answered. “You’re Curt Cannon, aren’t you?”

“No.”

“Don’t snow me, Cannon. The rumble’s out already. Half the Bowery knows you’re holed up here.”

“You’re wrong. Cannon is dead.”

“You think anybody swallowed that hook? Me, especially?”

“Why you, especially?”

“The guy who got it was Johnny Mazzine. I know.”

“How?”

“I knew him before he hit the deep skids, and I saw him before he went on this last ride. Let’s put it this way: we were pretty close.”

“All right.”

“I know who got it, Cannon. I want to know who dished it.”

“Why?”

“Like I said, we were close.”

“What makes you think I know?”

“Is that a bottle?” she asked. She walked over to the bed, and I watched the tautness of the skirt as she moved. She was a big girl, but the bones were well padded. Her legs were long and curved, and she sure knew how to fill that sweater.

She lifted the jug by its neck, sat down on the bed and took a deep swallow. “Man, I needed that,” she said.

“Help yourself.”

“Thanks.” She swallowed again, tilting her head all the way back. When she had put down the bottle, a serious look had come into her eyes. “I want to know who killed Johnny.”

“You can have that for free.”

She leaned forward expectantly. “Who?”

“A Chicago punk named Buck Grafton.”

“How do you know?”

“I know. If you want it, you’ve got it.”

“Where do I find him?”

“I don’t know.”

She stood up, smoothed the skirt over her hips, and walked over to me, deliberately swinging everything she owned. “Come on, Cannon. Where do I find him?”

She stopped about three inches away from me, her lips almost level with mine. She put both hands on my shoulders, thrust her hips forward.

“Where is he?” she asked.

I didn’t answer. She began moving her hips, and her lips came closer. She closed her mouth on mine, and her tongue was alive, and her breasts were tight against me. I brought my hands up, cupping them. Her flesh was firm, and she kept moving deliberately, moving her mouth and her breasts and her hips.

She pulled her mouth away, and her eyes had smoked over. “Where is he, Cannon?” Her voice was a whisper.

“I don’t know.”

“Okay,” she said. “Okay.” She started to move out of my arms, but I held her tightly, and a puzzled look came into her eyes. She lifted her head and studied my face. “I …”

I shut off her words with my mouth.

She seemed ready to struggle, and then all the fight went out of her. She came up against me and this time her kiss was real.

It was just getting dark when she left. Half the bottle was gone, and I felt tired and empty. I thought of the big girl, and her boy friend, who had taken six slugs in the face because he was mistaken for me. The rumble was out now. If the Bowery knew I was alive, the town knew it. And if the town knew it, Buck Grafton would know it. And once he knew, he’d sure as hell head right back to the Bowery again, and his first stop would be Piggy Peggett. And if the Bowery knew where I was, Piggy would know. Piggy would sell his mother’s heart to save his own skin, so when Buck Grafton started pushing his weight around, Piggy would tell him just where to find me.

That was fine.

I checked out of the Hotel Paul.

I took a room in a dump three blocks away, and then I tried to make some sense out of what was going on. I had agreed to do a rub job for Charlie Semmler. All well and good. As far as I’m concerned, an agreement with a punk is like no agreement at all. The trouble was, Semmler might not share my views. As soon as he learned I’d checked out of the Paul, he’d probably send some of his guns around. This time, they wouldn’t be so cordial.

At the same time, Buck Grafton was still in my hair—and that left me sitting in the middle with my hands in mittens. It might be easier to look up Semmler’s hood, put a hole or two in him, and leave him for the street cleaners. I fished into my pocket and came up with the photo Semmler had given me. I studied the hooded eyes, the flat eyes of a killer. Another idea hit me, and the more I thought about it, the more I appreciated the .45 Semmler had provided me with.

Because all of a sudden, this didn’t seem like a game. All of a sudden I realized the guy I was allegedly stalking was a killer, and if the rumble got out I was dogging him, I might have him on my back, too, together with Semmler and Grafton.

If I’d owned a three-headed coin, I’d have tossed it.

Instead, I juggled the thugs around, came up with Buck Grafton, and headed over to see Piggy Peggett.

The fat man was not frightened this time. His eyes were wide, but fear wasn’t troubling him any more. He lay slumped behind his counter, the wide expanse of his shirtfront covered with blood. The killer hadn’t been economical. He had emptied a big gun into Piggy, and the slugs had torn away his chest, leaving a field of blood where there had once been something of a man.

The rumble was out.

The rumble had reached Buck Grafton and Piggy had been paid more than the three C’s he’d bargained for. I lifted the phone on the counter, dialed “O” and said, “Give me the police.” I reported the murder, managing to withhold my name, and then I got the hell out of there. Fast.

Autumn is a time for dying.

The world dies in autumn, and a part of every man dies with it. I walked the Bowery streets, and I read the faces of the bums. There was dull resignation in those faces, remorse in the shuffle of feet, the listless hang of a head. Summer was dead, and a park bench is a cold thing in the winter. Summer was dead and autumn had used a thick knife stained with red.

There had been other autumns …

When Toni was a part of me, there had been times when autumn was alive. Long walks in the woods, with the sound of crunching leaves underfoot. Kisses from lips touched by the wind. Blonde hair blowing wildly back from her face. And the smile in her eyes, and the promise in her body. The sumac and the birches and the wild apples, and the day high in the hills, with the world at our feet, and her body a pale ivory against the tall green grass.

Now there was only the feel of a .45 hard against my belly, and a man named Grafton, and another man with the eyes of a killer.

I walked the Bowery because it’s the safest place in the world. One bum is another bum. Their rags are a stamp of anonymity. Their faces all wear the whisky mark that makes them unrecognizable. And all at once I was tired of walking. Somebody wanted me dead. Walking wasn’t going to help that any.

Forty-seventh and Broadway, Piggy had said. When Grafton had spoken to him, he’d asked how to get there. It could mean nothing, of course. A restaurant, a theater, anything that might attract an out-of-towner. But it could also mean a hotel, and that was worth a chance.

I took the chance. I used some more of Semmler’s twenty bucks on a cab because I was in a big hurry to see Mr. Grafton now. And because there was less chance of being met by one of the other guys chasing me. Subways and buses were too crowded. If we were going to play Tap-the-Skull together, there was no time like the present.

I ignored the Broadway dance palaces, the movies, the penny arcades, the Clearance Sale stores, the restaurants, the million and one things that could have pulled Grafton here. I headed straight for the hotels nestling on West Forty-seventh like cockroaches. Their marquees stretched to the curb, electric bulbs announcing the price of a room. The hotels all look the same. The dim interior, the small desk, the two elevators, the shabby couches in the lobby.

I started with the one nearest to Broadway, and worked my way east down the street. The desk clerks were not very cordial. They eyed my bloodshot eyes, my bearded face, my rumpled clothes, and then reluctantly told me there was no Grafton registered, sorry.

I covered the street, and pretty soon there were no more hotels to work. For a second, I wished for the old days again, the days of the big agency, when I could have staked out a dozen legmen. Only for a second. Because I remembered then that Parker had been one of my legmen, a good operative, a guy I’d trusted.

I stopped at the nearest bar and threw off three double hookers of rye. Then I went back to Fourteenth Street and the Hotel Paul.

I cased the lobby, saw that it was empty, and walked straight to the desk. The clerk did not look up from his ledger.

“I checked out earlier today,” I said. “Did anyone call for me after that?”

He looked up, stared at me. “Your name?” he asked. “Cannon.”

“Cannon. Just a moment.” He turned his back to me and went through a little stack of notes. He took one of these from the pile, brought it back to the desk and said, “Yes, a young lady was here to see you.” He kept his face relaxed, but the glitter in his eyes told me what I wanted to know even before I asked.

“Did she leave a name?”

“Sheila. Just Sheila.”

“Did she say where she could be reached?”

“She left this address, sir.” He handed the slip of paper to me, probably having memorized it six times over.

“Thanks,” I said. The address was on East Sixty-seventh. I walked out of the Paul, looking both ways before stepping outside and then I grabbed another cab. Semmler’s twenty was going very rapidly, much too rapidly. But I had to keep out of crowds.

The driver pulled up in front of the address on the slip of paper. I paid him and tipped him frugally. Overtipping isn’t a wise thing, when the extra dimes will buy a drink later on. The house was a four-story job with a white stone front. I took the steps up, opened the outer door, and looked at the slip of paper again.

Apartment Forty-two.

The top floor. I looked along the row of mailboxes, my eye stopping at the one marked 42. A neatly lettered placard in the box told me the girl’s last name. McKeon. Sheila McKeon. I pushed the bell button and walked to the inside door. The door buzzed open, and I entered a cool, dim, carefully groomed lobby. A tall rubber plant rested in a large pot just inside the door. A gilt-edged mirror hung on the wall, and a marble-topped table with wrought iron legs was under the mirror. I started up the steps. The banister had been newly oiled and polished. There was the smell of cleanliness about the place, and I wondered if the landlady knew what went on in Apartment Forty-two. It was a cinch Semmler was paying for, and playing in, this nice, quiet respectable joint.

I reached the fourth-floor landing and found Apartment Forty-two halfway down the hall. I was about to press the buzzer when I saw a scap of paper wedged between the door and the jamb. I pulled it loose and read the hastily scribbled note.

Cannon,

I’m dressing. Walk in and make yourself comfortable.

I shrugged, pocketed the note and opened the door.

“I’m here,” I called. I still had the door open. “Anybody home?”

I closed the door behind me.

The first slug tore a three-inch hole in the door jamb. I saw the wood splinter and I dropped to the rug and held on while three more slugs sent a shower of splinters onto my back. There was no sound except the small puffing noises a silencer makes. I scooted across the rug, keeping low, while the puffing went on. Three more slugs sent tufts of woolen carpeting into the air. Seven slugs, all told. An empty gun, if it was a .45 I heard the snap of a clip being rammed home somewhere across the room. I was behind a big easy chair by this time, and my own gun was in my fist. I thumbed the safety, and my hand began to sweat against the walnut stock.

It was silent in the room, as silent as a tomb.

“All right, Grafton!” I shouted. “Make your God-damned play!”

He made his play. Two more slugs ripped into the stuffing of the chair. One lodged somewhere inside, but the other ploughed through and slapped against the plaster near my right, chipping a large chunk out of the wall.

“I’m still here, Grafton!” I yelled.

He was still there too. Three puffs this time, three puffs like someone making popping sounds with his lips. One caught in the chair, hitting a spring and sending a weird whine into the stillness of the room. The second shot went wild, knocking a picture from the wall over my head. The third sliced through the chair and came so close to my head that I heard the whistle of the bullet and could almost touch the metal jacket.

Five slugs. Two to go, and hotshot would have to reload. Or maybe he wouldn’t. It all depended how close the next two came.

“Come on, you bastard, you can do better than that.”

I flattened myself against the rug and waited. Nothing happened.

“You giving up, Graft …”

I never got to finish it. The slugs came across the room like angry hornets, fast, two in a row. They both stuck in the chair, and I heard the clip slide out of the .45 again, but I was up and headed across the room. He was behind one arm of the long sofa and I heard the fresh clip smack home as I leaped forward, the gun ahead of me.

I landed just as he brought his own gun up to fire, the silencer giving it a long, clumsy look. The gun went off with a pompous puff, and then I was on him and we were a jumble of arms and legs and .45’s as we went rolling across the rug. I brought my fist down on the back of his neck, and felt him go stiff for a second. He had my gun hand pinned, and he brought his knee up from the floor and down again, and I felt pain lance up from my crotch in a sheet of fire. We rolled over once more, and there were two more puffs and the acrid stench of cordite.

I kept clubbing him, my .45 free now. I brought the muzzle down on his shoulder, but he rolled away from the blow and was bringing his own gun up when I stepped on his hand.

His fingers opened, he yelled, and I kicked the gun clear across the room. I reached down for him, and he kicked out again, catching me on the inside of my thigh this time. It didn’t hurt, but it knocked me off balance, and when I staggered back, he got to his feet and sprinted for the door. I was bringing the .45 up, ready to put a hole in Buck Grafton when I saw his face.

It surprised me.

It surprised me so much that I held my fire, and by the time I’d regained my senses, he was across the room and out of the door, and his heels were clattering down the steps to the street.

I blinked my eyes. I stuck the .45 into my waistband again, and scratched my head.

The guy who’d done his best to make me look like Swiss cheese wasn’t Buck Grafton at all.

I’d have known that face anywhere.

It was the same face that had stared up from the photo Semmler had given me.

I walked across the room and picked the silenced gun up from the rug. I hefted it in my palm, and then walked to a closed door and kicked it open. As I’d suspected, the door led to a bedroom, a lush combination of satin spreads, brocaded curtains and mirrored walls. A long love seat lounged beside the bed, and a big S in a diamond was monogrammed in the center of the bedspread. The room was orderly. The hairbrush and comb on the dresser were neatly angled. A pair of slippers rested alongside the bed, prettily pomponed in pink. I threw open the sliding door on the closet. A Persian lamb and a silver mink rubbed furry elbows side by side. I slid open the other door. Expensive clothes, tons of them. A sable stole, a pile of evening gowns, high-heeled pumps. I walked to the dresser and opened the top drawer. Lacy panties and bras. Folded slips. Everything neat and precise, with a small monogrammed S on the breasts of the slips and bras, and in the corner of each pair of panties. And resting on one pile of panties nestling against a bed of silk, a pearl-handled .22.

I broke open the gun. It was loaded. I dropped it back onto the panties, closed the drawer and went out into the living room again. I went through the kitchen and found a pair of glasses in the sink. One glass still had a cherry in the bottom. The other glass, empty, had a lipstick stain on the rim. There was an ashtray on the formica-topped table. Two cigarettes carried lipsticked tips. A third butt had no stains. A pencil rested alongside the ashtray, probably the same pencil that had written the come-on note I’d found wedged in the doorjamb.

Sweet innocent little Sheila McKeon.

Come on in, Cannon, I’m dressing. Step into my parlor. Wham!

It was a fine world, with a snake under every rock, and a woman behind every bush. Trouble was, you couldn’t tell the snakes from the women without a program card.

I took the clip from the silenced .45, snapped the slugs into the toilet bowl and put the empty clip and the gun on the outside window sill, over the sunken bathtub. For good measure, I went back into the bedroom, shook the shells out of the .22, and then found a carton of cartridges in the drawer. I stuck these into my pocket and left Sheila McKeon’s booby trap, after carefully placing the .22 back on its cushion of panties.

I walked over to Third Avenue and had a late supper of potato chips and rye. I hung around, watching an old Western on the bar’s TV, until the big clock on the wall told me it was eight-fifteen. I figured Miss McKeon would be back from wherever she’d gone by this time, so I decided to give it another whack. I was hoping I’d scared away the nameless face for awhile, and I was also hoping Sheila hadn’t as yet been told about the bungled job. Her neighbors surely hadn’t heard a thing—not with that whispering .45. Not that it mattered much either way. If she knew, I didn’t think she’d figure on my coming back quite so soon.

I didn’t ring her bell this time. I pushed a button at random, waited for the inside door to buzz, and then took the steps two at a time. This time, my gun was in my hand.

I tried the knob when I got to Apartment Forty-two. I didn’t expect the door to be unlocked, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to ring. I backed off against the opposite wall, threw my shoulder against the door, right above the lock. The wood splintered and I fell into the living room, getting to my feet as Sheila came out of the bedroom.

The noise had startled her, and she’d run out quickly to see just who the hell was knocking down doors in her living room. She’d probably just come out of the bathtub, because her blonde hair was wet, and she wore a white terry robe that was soaked through in spots. The spots that were soaked were very interesting. Her breasts strained at the rough cloth, and the robe was belted tightly at her waist, outlining the full flow of her body.

When she saw me, she turned to head back for the bedroom. The robe parted over her legs, showing a long stretch of white, firm flesh. She seemed to remember the gun in my hand then, and she turned slowly to face me again, her cheeks as white as her thigh had been. I closed the door behind me.

“Good evening,” I said.

“You …”

“I’m alive.”

“I …”

“Your friend missed, baby. Two full clips’ worth … and then some.”

“Wh-what do you want?”

“The story. The full story. Why does Mr. Nameless want me deceased?”

“You don’t know?”

“I don’t know.”

Something like cunning flashed in her eyes. She smiled then and took a step forward. The robe parted again, and I saw white flesh again, and my eyes lingered again a little longer.

“He … he knows you’re after him.”

“Who?”

“My … friend.”

“Who’s your friend?”

“The one in the picture Semmler gave you.”

“What’s his name?”

“I don’t know.”

“I thought he was your friend.”

“He is. I mean …”

“Is he, or isn’t he?”

“Yes, he is. That is, I met him a little while back. Before …”

“Before what?”

“A little while ago.”

“And you don’t know his name?”

“No.”

“That’s the story of the week, honey. Let me hear the rest of it.”

“What else is there?” she asked. She walked to a low end table and leaned over to spear a cigarette. The wet robe tried to cling to her breasts, lost and fell away. The blonde hair dropped over the open throat of her robe like a curtain, temporarily saving her modesty.

“Where’d you meet him?”

“Out of town.”

“Where?”

“Out of town. I was … I was still dancing then.”

“You’re a dancer?”

“Exotic.”

“Strip?”

“If you like.”

“And you met him then, is that it?”

“Yes.” She lit the cigarette and blew out a long plume of smoke.

“Why does Semmler want him dead?”

She shrugged, “He just does.”

“What’s your connection with Semmler?”

“I’m not a dancer any more.”

“And you’d risk this sweet setup for some hood you met years ago? Why?”

“That’s my business.”

“You and Semmler sing the same songs, don’t you? Why’d you help this character rig a trap for me?”

“Because you were after him. You took the job, and I thought you were out to get him.”

“Come off it, honey. Semmler forced me into this. You knew damned well I wasn’t after your playmate.”

She smiled again. “You might have been.” She shivered and said, “I’m cold. Would you mind if I dressed?”

“Go ahead,” I said.

She walked into the bedroom and I followed her. She stepped behind a screen in the corner of the room, and the robe came up over the top of the screen.

“Did Semmler keep his end of the bargain?” I asked.

“What bargain?”

“He said if I blasted your playmate, he’d make sure Grafton was on the next plane to Chicago.”

“Don’t make me laugh.” I heard the rustle of silk behind the screen, silk against flesh.

“What’s so funny?”

“Semmler never keeps a bargain.”

“Did Grafton kill Piggy Peggett?”

She paused a moment, and then said, “I don’t know any Piggy Peggett.”

“Why didn’t Grafton get this kill job? Semmler knew he was in town. Why’d he pick on a bum like me?”

“You’re not very bright, are you, Cannon? Turn around, will you? I’m coming out.”

I turned to face the wall, and she stepped out from behind the screen. The wall I was facing was mirrored, and she knew it, and I knew damn well she knew it. She was wearing bra and panties, with gartered silk stockings and high heels. There was the little S in the corner of the panties and on the right breast of the bra. She started walking across the room to the dresser, and then pretended to learn about the mirror for the first time. Her hand went up to her mouth in mock surprise. She tried to cover her breasts, and then the sheer panties that couldn’t conceal anything. In desperation, she ran to the dresser drawer, hoping I’d think she was reaching in for clothing. I knew what she was reaching for; I let her reach.

It came out in her hand, the .22, its grip snug in her fist.

Her lips twisted, and her teeth showed, and a small noise escaped her mouth. “He may have missed, but I won’t, Cannon.”

I turned slowly. She didn’t much care about her modesty now. Her underwear was the sheerest stuff, and she might have been on the runway of a burley house for all she cared. I took in the scenery because I knew the .22 in her hand was about as deadly as a woolly lamb.

“You still think I’m out to get him, huh?”

“I still think so.”

“And it means that much to you?”

“There are other reasons, Cannon. You wouldn’t understand them.”

“Why the big act back at Semmler’s place? Why the big ‘my hero’ stuff?”

“That was no act. I was looped, and I thought I’d finally found someone else who could stand up to that pig. It turned out I was wrong. You hired out as a gun.”

“You say ‘someone else.’ Is there another person who’s standing up to Semmler? Is it the guy I’m supposed to gun? The face without a name?”

She smiled and lifted the .22. I smiled back.

“There are a lot of things you’ll never find out, Cannon. Things you wouldn’t know unless you understood the politics involved. It’s a pity.”

I kept smiling. “What’s a pity?”

“That you’ll never know. A real pity.”

“A real …”

The gun went off. I heard the sound, and shock registered on my face because it had never occurred to me she could have reloaded it while I was gone. The shock fled before the pain that lanced through my shoulder, and then the gun went off again, and again, and again, and I was falling to the rug, and the blood was streaming down my arm and chest.

I hit the rug, and the last thing I saw was the little S in the corner of Sheila’s panties, and the long, full, tapering legs under that S. She ran past me just before the blackness closed in.

There was a long tunnel.

The tunnel was black and cold and the walls dripped tears. There was a blonde at the end of the tunnel. She looked like Toni sometimes, and sometimes she looked like Sheila McKeon. I kept crawling toward the blonde, and the tears that dripped from the tunnel walls were red. I crawled, and every time I got near the blonde, Parker stepped in, pulling her away, farther and farther.

The walls closed in, and the tunnel was very black again, and very cold, and very wet.

And then the blonde would come back, her hair gleaming at the end of the tunnel, like a beacon light, and I would start crawling again, until Parker came back and laughed and laughed and laughed, and the blonde hair was receding, fainter, dimmer—gone.

Blackness.

“Jesus Christ!”

The voice fled down the long blackness of the tunnel, and it echoed and re-echoed. I reached for the blonde again, and this time she reached back.

“Toni,” I said. “Toni.”

“What a godawful mess.”

Someone took me under the armpits. The fingers were strong, and my head was cradled against something very soft. I felt my heels scraping up the dark turf of the tunnel, and then they bumped and bumped, and I knew I was being pulled downstairs. Street noises assailed my ears, and there was the overpowering aroma of gasoline, and the sudden shriek of an automobile stopping. A door slammed and I leaned back against the something soft, and there was a breeze blowing on my face.

And then there were many hands, and they lifted me gently, and there was a mattress under me, and when I opened my eyes, I was staring up into the Professor’s face.

“Easy, Curt,” he said.

I closed my eyes, and another voice joined the Professor’s. I recognized the voice, and I knew what the something soft had been then. The girl whose boy friend had got it. The girl whose boy friend had taken the slugs meant for me, long, long ago—a million years ago.

“Is it bad, Professor?”

“Pretty bad. Four slugs is always pretty bad.”

The Professor was another bum, a bum like me. He’d once been a chemist in a big drug chain—until he took a liking for the materials he worked with. He’d been hooked on heroin for close to two years before they got wise to him. They kicked him out on his backside, and he’d drifted, and he’d wound up where all drifters land sooner or later.

He bent over me now, and probed my shoulder with long, thin fingers. He peered through his thick glasses, scratched the stubble on his chin and said, “Can you hear me, Curt?”

I nodded my head.

“Good. Whoever dished it, dished it clean. Like target practice. All the slugs in a nice circle under your shoulder. I don’t think the bone is hit. I’m not even sure all the slugs are still in you. You hear me, Curt?”

“I hear you,” I mumbled.

“You want me to dig for them?”

“This needs a doctor,” the girl said.

“I know, Bet,” the Professor answered. “You want a doctor, Curt?”

“Can you fix it?”

The Professor shrugged. “It’s your shoulder, Curt.”

“Fix it,” I said.

It was not fun. Even with the jug of wine Bet brought, it was not fun. The wine clouded my brain and dulled the edge of pain, but wine can do only so much. The bare light bulb swung over my head, back and forth, and the Professor’s shadow climbed the wall like a panicky black ghost. I kept the lip of the bottle to my mouth, almost biting a chunk out of the glass when the Professor started to dig. I swallowed more cheap wine, and it sank to the pit of my stomach, and it turned and smoldered there, and the fumes reached into my head and made the shadows and the swinging bulb something out of a Dali painting.

The Professor hovered over me, with the swinging light reflecting in his thick glasses. His breathing was harsh, and there was the sickly sweet odor of the addict on his breath. I tried to focus my eyes on the stubble that covered his face. I watched a glistening drop of sweat slide from his temple down over his cheekbone to the heavy line of his jaw. My hands clamped onto the neck of the bottle. I took another swig of the wine; felt the hot knife probe into my shoulder. I brought my teeth together and hung on, and the room began to spin, and there was only the pain in my shoulder and the sound of the Professor’s ragged breathing and the girl’s voice murmuring over and over again, “It’ll be over soon, Curt. It’ll be over soon.”

And then the pain suddenly subsided, and something was holding my shoulder together again. I opened my eyes and saw the Professor unreeling a wide band of tape, tightening it around my shoulder and under my arm.

“Okay, Curt?”

“Okay,” I mumbled.

“Show him, Bet,” the Professor said.

Bet. The big girl was named Bet. She held out her palm and I looked at the lead pellets there.

“Twenty-two,” the Professor said.

“Who did it?” Bet asked.

“A broad.”

“Why?”

“I’m still trying to figure,” I said.

“You’ll have a long time to do that, Curt,” the Professor answered.

She stayed with me. She was big all over, this Bet, and she waited with me while my shoulder healed, day after day, until I thought I’d go crazy on that cot.

“They think you’re dead for sure now, Curt. The word’s out that you took four in the heart.”

“The girl must have thought so,” I said.

“Sheila McKeon.”

“How’d you find out, Bet?”

“I went to the Paul. I had news, Curt. I asked the clerk where you were. He said you’d checked out, with no forwarding address. Then he remembered that this McKeon dame had been around, and that he’d given you the address. He thought I might find you there. He reeled off the address right out of his head. She must be some dame, this McKeon bitch.”

“Some dame,” I said. “What was the news you had?”

“I found Grafton.”

“Where?”

“A crackerbox on West Forty-seventh.”

I began shaking my head. “No. I went over them with a …”

“Registered under a phony name. I got the tip from a guy I know. I also got a lot more.”

“Like?”

“Like Grafton didn’t come to New York just to put the blocks to you.”

“Why then?”

“Big syndicate business. Expansion, from what I got. There wasn’t much. My tip was very clam-mouthed.”

I sat up in bed. “What?”

“I said.…”

“I heard you.” I grabbed her to me, every firm inch of her. “Baby,” I said. “I think that’s it. I think that’s it!” I put my mouth down on hers, and her body came alive in my arms.

“Curt … your shoulder. You’ll never get well this way.”

“Baby, I’m well already. I’m good and goddam well. Get out of here while I put on my pants.”

Bet smiled. “Why?” she asked.

I practically had to slug her to get her to stay home. I didn’t want her along because I expected a tussle, and I didn’t want her in the middle of it. She gave me the information I needed, and I went to the Hotel Green, the West Forty-seventh Street crackerbox that held Buck Grafton. I asked for Grafton’s room at the desk. He was registered under the name of Bob Gorman, and the clerk told me he was in Room 313.

I still had the .45, and this time I was ready to use it. This time, I held all the cards, because I knew what the story was—all of it. I took the steps up fast, and theft I rapped on the door of 313 with the butt of the .45.

“Who is it?” The voice sounded familiar, but I couldn’t place it, and there wasn’t much time to mull it over.

“Bellboy, sir.”

“Just a second.”

The door opened a crack, and that was far enough. I shoved it open the rest of the way and went into the room like Hopalong Cassidy, the .45 ready. I stopped dead when I looked into the muzzle of a .32. It was a familiar gun. The last time I’d seen it, it had been in a room that boasted a floor-to-ceiling bookcase. The gun had been in the fist of a gent with gray hair, and he had just slapped hell out of a blonde lying on the rug. The same gent held the .32 now. His name was Charlie Semmler.

“Just drop it, Cannon,” he said.

I let my .45 fall to the floor. Semmler lifted the gun gingerly, then kicked the door shut behind him.

“You beat me to it, huh, Semmler?” I said.

“You got nine lives, Cannon. The word has it …”

“The word’s wrong. But then, everything’s wrong, isn’t it?” I looked over at the hood tied in the chair by the window. “Like our friend here, the boy in the photograph, the lad you wanted rubbed.”

Semmler smiled. “You know, Cannon?”

“I know, sure. It took me a while; I’m pretty dim-witted. But I know now, and I should have tumbled from the very beginning. You show me a photograph, but you hold back a name. Well, I know the name now. The guy in the photograph and Buck Grafton are one and the same.” I looked at Grafton where he strained against the ropes that held him to the chair. The gag in his mouth was tight, and he mumbled something that never got out.

Semmler nodded. “Buck Grafton.”

“Why me?” I asked. “Why me, Semmler? I got my own theories, but they may be wrong.”

“Let’s hear them.”

“Sure. It was all chance, from top to bottom. You knew Grafton was in town, and you knew the Chi syndicate was planning a move. That put you right behind the eight-ball, so you decided to get Grafton out of the way. You knew where I’d been allegedly found dead, so you sent two of your boys there to see if you could get a lead on Grafton. They were probably outside in the car when I rolled up to pump Piggy. They recognized me, and phoned you I was still alive. You told them to pick me up, because all at once you had a better idea.”

“What was the better idea, Cannon?”

“Get me to do the job. Tell Grafton I was still alive so he’d head back to the Bowery where you’d already told me I’d find him. I kill him, and this keeps the cops out of your hair. It also prevents any possible repercussions in Chicago. Grafton came here to kill Cannon. Okay, Cannon bagged him first. Your hands are clean.”

“Right,” Semmler said. “All the way. But the bitch …”

“The bitch went for Grafton in a big way. From way back when she was peeling for the baldies. She figured I was the gun, so she rigged a trap to get Grafton out from under—and allow him to keep his promise to Benny Malloy in Elmira at the same time. When the trap fizzled, she tried to do the job herself—and damn near succeeded.”

“She ain’t doing any more jobs, Cannon. She’s keeping company with a bag of cement, down by the bottom of the East River.”

“You found out, huh?”

“Not until today. She flew the coop after she gunned you, and we picked her up this morning. Grafton probably would have gone with her, but he still had syndicate business here. I beat her black and blue, and she told me she’d gunned you for Grafton, and that he was safe now. That was the kiss-off—and I decided to do the goddam job myself, and the hell with Chicago.”

“So do it,” I said. “There’s Grafton. Give it to him.”

“What for? It seems you ain’t dead after all, Cannon.”

“You want me to give him the finishing touch, Semmler?” I smiled thinly. “You’d trust me with a gun in my hand?”

Semmler smiled back, and he hefted my .45 in his palm. He shook open his .32 and ejected the shells on the floor, leaving one in the gun.

“You’ll use this one,” he said. “I’ll hold your cannon. Face Grafton.”

“A real brave boy,” I said. “You cover me with the .45, and you leave me one bullet in the .32, just to make sure I don’t get fancy.”

“That’s right, Cannon.”

“All right, give me the God-damned gun.” I was itching to get my hands on it, because I was going to start firing the second my finger hit the trigger. But Semmler saw the look in my eyes, and he smiled again.

“There’s an empty chamber under the firing pin, in case you want to try any stunts. That means you get one free click, and then you’ll have a shell in firing position. I’m right behind you, so make sure you shoot at Grafton.”

He handed the gun around me, still standing behind me. I was sweating now because I knew that after Grafton I came next. Semmler sure as hell wouldn’t leave me around where I could spill to the cops or any willing syndicate ear. I held the .32 in my hand, and I wondered what I could do with one lousy bullet.

“I got a score to settle, Semmler,” I said. “This is the punk that was out to kill me, remember?”

“I remember.”

“Do you mind?”

“I’m still behind you, Cannon.”

I walked over to where Grafton was tied and gagged in the chair. His eyes whimpered, and he made a noise that never got past the gag.

“Why didn’t you stay in Chicago, you stupid bastard?” I asked. I brought up my fist, and I slammed it against the side of his face. He tried to dodge the blow, but it caught him, and Semmler began laughing. I moved closer to the chair. “Why didn’t you stay where you belonged?” I slugged him again, and he shook his head, and now I was really crowding the chair, with my shoe close to the chair leg.

“Come on, Cannon,” Semmler said, “let’s get this over with.”

“One more,” I said. “One more so that bastard can think about it wherever he’s going. One more, like a good-by kiss. Here it comes, Grafton.” I lifted the .32 over my head, preparing to bring it down in a swing. At the same time, I kicked at the chair leg, and when I brought the gun down against Grafton’s head, I put all the weight of my shoulder behind it. The chair toppled over to the side, carrying Grafton with it to the floor. I moved as if I were trying to catch the chair, and then I was down, too, and the .32 was pointed right at Semmler’s head.

It had all happened so fast that the smile was still on his face. He saw the bore of the .32, and the smile vanished an instant before I squeezed the trigger. He fired once, and then my slug took him between the eyes. His face was spouting blood as he sank to the floor. The .45 went off in his hand once more, and the slug went wide, and I heard a low moan beside me. I turned and saw the rose blooming on Grafton’s shirtfront, spilling down the clean white, covering him with blood. He squirmed once, then sagged against the ropes that held him to the toppled chair.

I looked at Grafton’s dead eyes staring up at the ceiling. Then I looked at the .45 in Semmler’s hand.

It was a cinch his prints had smeared any of mine on the gun. And it was the gun he’d given me long ago—undoubtedly registered in his name. I took another look, and then I smiled a little. I wiped the .32 clean with my handkerchief, untied Grafton so that he rolled over onto the floor, and then dropped the gun beside him. I ran like hell then for the fire exit, down the steps, and out of the building. When I hit the street, the sirens were piling up in the distance. I didn’t stop to wait for them.

I let it go at that.

I never went back to where Bet was waiting. She’d read about it in the papers, and it’d be better that way.

She was a nice girl, a swell girl, but her competition was a ghost—and ghosts are the only things that never die in autumn.

Deadlier Than the Mail

There were Santa Clauses along Third Avenue, and the promise of snow grayed the sky over the Bowery. The Santas had straggly, dirty white beards and they pounded their hands against the cold. Their uniforms were ill-fitting. The crimson and white bagged over the pillows wrapped around their middles. The black oilcloth boots over their shoes told the world they were imitations, and there wasn’t a kid alive who’d believe in Santa ever again—not after seeing these phonies behind their phonier beards.

I walked up Third, and the Santas tinkled their bells behind their wooden chimneys or their cast-iron pots. I walked past them with my head bent and the collar of my jacket high. The air was knife-cold. It slashed at the skin, reached into the bones, put an edge on the tongue for a good, warming shot of bourbon.

Wassail, wassail.…

I’d been here before. Long, long ago when I’d been a kid they all called Curty. More recently when a guy named Charlie Dagerra woke up with his throat slit because he’d refused to pay protection money to a local punk. And now it was a Monday in December, and the calendar said it was the 21st, four days to Christmas. The store windows, huddled against the cold, lighted like potbellied stoves, looking warm and cheerful, overflowing with things to give and tinsel and cotton snow and toy trains and small plaster statues of Saint Nick.

The call had come from Kit O’Donnell, the girl I used to call Katie in the old days. I wouldn’t have made the trip for anyone else, not in this weather, but there’d been something in her voice that made me forget the cold. I cut down 119th Street and kept walking toward First Avenue. The grocery store was on First, between 118th and 119th. I opened the door, and a bell tinkled and then Kit rushed from the back room.

She’d let her black hair grow longer, pulled it back from the oval of her face into a saucy pony tail. Her brown eyes opened wide, and then she smiled and said, “Curt, you came.”

“I said I would.”

She came out from behind the counter and took both my hands in hers. Her hands were warm, and she looked up into my face and for some reason I thought she would start bawling.

“You’re cold, Curt,” she said.

“A little brisk out there.”

“Can I get you something to drink? My father keeps a bot …”

“Just a little,” I said. To take off the chill.”

She went into the back room and came out front again with a bottle of Schenley’s and a water glass. She poured the glass half full and then handed it to me. I smiled, threw it off, and then put the glass down on the counter.

“Now,” I said, “what’s all the trouble about?”

“I guess I shouldn’t have called you, Curt. I mean, you did so much for us last time. You …”

“What is it, Kit?”

“Do you remember Andy Traconni?”

“I remember. What about him?”

“He hasn’t been doing too well, Curt. He was a bricklayer until he had an accident with his hands, and he’s been out of work since. He gets checks from the Welfare Department. He’s got a wife and a kid, Curt, and the checks don’t stretch too far.”

“I don’t understand, Kit.”

“Curt, someone’s been stealing his checks. You know the mailboxes in these old buildings. You can open them with a bad breath. Someone’s been taking the checks from his box.”

“How long has this been going on?”

“A month, two months.”

“Well, for Chirst’s sake, why hasn’t he reported it?”

“He’s afraid to, Curt.”

“Afraid to? Honey, tampering with the mails is a government offense. He’d be sensible to …”

“And suppose the thief has friends, Curt? What happens then? Who’s going to protect Andy and his family?”

I shook my head. “Kit …”

“I know, Curt. I shouldn’t have asked you. Only I thought … well, it’s getting close to Christmas. I thought if we could find whoever is doing it, we might as least get the money back.”

“Fat chance of that. This is an old racket, Kit, and not likely to be run by an amateur. Getting the checks is only half of it. They still have to be cashed after that, and that entails a phony driver’s license or some other forged identification.” I shook my head again. “I’d like to help, but honestly …”

“It isn’t only Andy, Curt. There are others in the neighborhood, too. You knew Andy, so I mentioned him.”

“How many others?”

“Ten, twelve. Won’t you help, Curt?”

“You put me on a spot, Kit.”

“I want to. Will you help?”

I sighed heavily. “I’ll try. Let me have another drink, will you?”

She poured, and I drank, and then I asked her for the names of the people who’d been hit so far. She scribbled them on a sheet of paper, together with the addresses, and I left her and told her I’d get on it first thing in the morning.

December 22nd, and it still hadn’t showed. It was colder, if anything, and I tried to walk fast because the soles of my shoes were worn through and there’s nothing icier than a winter pavement. When I got to Andy Traconni’s building, there was a lot of excitement. Three patrol cars were parked at an angle to the curb, and cops and photographers were swarming all over the place. I stopped an old man in a mackinaw and I asked him what had happened.

“Andy,” he said in broken English. “Somebody kill him.”

“What!”

“In the hall,” he said, nodding his head emphatically. “Andy come down for the mail …” He broke off, held both hands in front of him and then squeezed them together in pantomime of someone being strangled. He nodded his head again and repeated, “Andy.”

It was impossible to get into the hallway, so I walked away from the building and hung around until the reporters began to thin out. I spotted the bulls when they came out of the building and piled into a Mercury sedan across the street. Then they pulled away and the uniformed cops followed them, and the crowd broke. Two internes came out with a stretcher, the sheet pulled up over what was left of Andy Traconni. The crowd disappeared entirely after the ambulance left, and I had the building to myself. I walked into the hall and looked at the mailboxes.

The one marked Traconni was battered and dented near the lock. It was a cinch it had been forced once, and never been repaired after that. A pile of square envelopes sat in the box, and I figured them to be Christmas cards. A merry Christmas it would be for Mrs. Traconni and her kid this year. The numeral 35 was stamped into the metal of the box, so I took the narrow steps up to the third-floor landing and found the apartment without even looking at the number. I stood outside the door and listened to the sobbing behind it, and finally I knocked.

A kid of about eight answered the door. His face was streaked with dirt and tears, and he looked as if he were ready to start crying all over again.

“I want to talk to your mother,” I said.

He looked at me suspiciously. He looked at my wrinkled suit and my bearded face. He was thinking, This is a bum, and he was wondering if I’d had anything to do with his father’s death.

“I knew your father when we were kids, son,” I told him. “I want to help.”

“Come in,” he said, as if I’d whispered the magic words.

He led me into a small living room dominated by a TV set in one corner. The blinds were drawn, and a frail woman in a print housedress sat in one of the easy chairs, a handkerchief to her face.

“Mrs. Traconni,” I said, “my name is Curt Cannon. I knew Andy well a long time ago.”

“I’ve heard of you,” she said softly.

“Do you have any idea who killed him?”

“Yes,” she said without hesitation. “The one who’s been stealing our checks.”

“How do you know?”

“Because Andy watched last week, and he found out something. He didn’t tell me what it was, but he said he would wait until the next check was due and find out for sure then. When he saw the mailman coming down the street this morning, he went down to watch. I think he hid himself while he watched. Then this … this happened. He should have left it alone. He should have forgot it. You can’t buck them, Mr. Cannon.”

“What did the police say?”

“They said he was hit first, they don’t know with what. It hit him on the side of the face, and they figured it stunned him. Then … then he was strangled.”

“And you think he knew who was stealing the checks?”

“I’m sure of it,” she said.

“I’ll look around,” I told her. “Maybe I’ll come up with something.”

“Thank you,” she said, and then she went back to her handkerchief. She was crying when I left the apartment.

I met a guy with a Christmas tree in the hallway. He was a fat guy, and he struggled with the tree, and sweat poured down his face, but there was a healthy smile on his face. The tree had made him forget the grubbiness of the tenement he lived in, and the cheapness of the coat on his back. When he passed me, he nodded his head happily and said, “A real big one this year,” and I nodded back and said nothing.

In the street, it was bitter cold. I caught up with the mailman about six blocks from Andy’s house. His bag was packed with Christmas cards, and he was sweating in spite of the cold. He was a big man with wiry black hair that spilled onto his forehead from beneath his tilted cap. His hands curled with the same wiry hair, and I watched the swift sure way his fingers dropped letters into the open row of boxes. I watched him for a few minutes, and then I asked, “Did you see Andy Traconni this morning?”

He didn’t turn from the boxes. He kept dumping the letters in, and he spoke without looking up, “Who’d you say?”

“Andy Traconni.”

“Oh. No, missed him today.”

“He was killed today.”

His hands paused for a moment. “What?”

“In the hallway. Did you happen to see anyone hanging around when you made your delivery?”

“No. Jesus. Killed, you say. Jesus!”

“Lot of people getting welfare checks on this route?”

He regarded me suspiciously. “Why? Why do you ask?”

“I’m just curious. Andy’s checks have been stolen for the past few months.”

“No kidding? Hell, why didn’t he say something about it? No kidding?”

“He never mentioned it to you?”

“No. He asked me if I’d delivered them a few times, and I told him sure. But I never suspected …”

“Anyone in this building get checks?” I asked.

“Lemme see. Yeah, Riley does. Apartment Four-C. He gets ’em every week.”

“Thanks,” I said. “Keep your eyes open.”

The mailman blinked. “I will.”

I left him stuffing cards into the boxes, and I took the steps up to the fourth floor and then knocked on the door to Four-C. I waited for a few minutes until a woman’s voice called, “Come in. It’s open.”

I opened the door and walked directly into the kitchen. A small Christmas tree stood on an end table at the far corner of the room. Chimney paper had been wrapped around the end table, and cotton had been used to cover the stand. The tree had no ornaments and no lights. It was sprinkled with aluminum foil, and someone with energy had swabbed the branches with Rinso for a snow-laden effect.

“Anybody home?” I called.

“Just a second.”

I waited, looking at the chipping paint on the wall, the dulled, blackened area over the four-burner stove. I heard a door behind me open, and a girl stepped into the room. She was wearing a full slip, and the slip ended just above her knees. It was cut low in the front, and her full breasts bunched against the silken fabric. One strap dangled over a pale white shoulder. The girl was a redhead, that natural carroty red that goes with a name like Riley. Her eyes were blue, and there were deep pockets under them. Her skin was pale. I stared at her for a moment, and she said, “Sorry to keep you waiting.”

She took a step closer to me, soundlessly moving on the worn linoleum that covered the floor, I looked down and saw that she was barefoot.

“You got a cigarette, or are you in a hurry?”

“I’ve got one,” I said. I fished into my pocket and pulled out a rumpled package of Pall Malls. The girl took one, and I lighted it for her. She sucked in the smoke gratefully, and then said, “Busy day, by Christ. The bastards are starting the holiday early.”

“Are you Mrs. Riley?” I asked.

“Me? Hell no, mac. Miss Riley, if you please. Christ, do I look like that old bag?”

“I don’t know your mother,” I said.

“You ain’t missing nothing, mac. She’s a lush from way back. You’ll find her souped to the ears in the local pub.” She took a close look at me and said, “Hey, don’t I know you?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Sure, ain’t you Curt Cannon? Weren’t you the guy who wiped up the street with those punks who were shaking down the neighborhood? Sure, I recognize you.”

I didn’t answer her.

“You got a yearning, huh, Curt boy?” she said. “Well, little Fran will take care of you.”

She took a step closer to me, and I said, “Your father gets welfare checks, they tell me.”

“What’s that got to do with the price of fish?”

“That’s why I’m here.”

“That’s a good one,” she said. She took my hand and started leading me across the room. I watched the way her flesh wiggled beneath the tightness of her slip. I pulled my hand away and she turned, surprised.

“What is it, boy?”

“How old are you, Fran? Sixteen?”

“Nineteen, if you’re worried about Quentin Quail. Hey, boy, what is it with you? You still got eyes for that bitchy wife of yours?”

“Can it, honey.”

“Sure. So carry the torch, who cares? Let me help you burn it brighter, boy. I need the dough.”

“Because your old man’s checks have been lifted?”

“Sure, but that don’t cut my ice, boy. The old man never gave me a cent anyway. The holidays are coming, and I use what I’ve got to get what I want.” She cupped her breasts suddenly, reaching forward toward me. “Come on, boy, it’s good stuff.”

“I’m on the wagon,” I paused. “Besides, I’m broke.”

“Mmm. Well, I ain’t Santa Claus. What’s on your mind, Cannon?”

“When was the first check missing?”

“About a month ago, I guess.”

“Lifted from the box?”

“Yeah. I saw the postman delivering that check on my way out in the morning. When the old man went down later in the day, the lock was snapped. Good-by check.”

“And the others?”

“Boy, we never even get a look at them. This hijacker must be Speedy Gonzalez.” She laughed and said, “Hey, Cannon, you know the one about Speedy Gonzalez?”

“Did your father report these thefts?”

“My old man? Cannon, he’s afraid to eat Rice Krispies. The explosions scare him.”

“What have you been living on?”

Fran Riley shrugged. “I make out. Times have been pretty good.” She smiled, and I saw something of the nineteen-year-old in her face for just an instant. “And it’s all tax-free,” she said.

“You should marry a straightman,” I told her.

“Any offers, Cannon?”

“I was in the club once,” I said. “My membership expired.”

She smiled again. “Besides, you’re no straightman.” The smile dropped from her face. “What do you say, Cannon? This is the slow time of day. You won’t be sorry.”

“I appreciate it,” I said. “But I’ve got a dead man on my mind.”

I left her to puzzle that one out.

When I got down to the street it was snowing. The flakes were, big and wet at first, and then they got smaller and sharper, biting at the skin, crusting the hair. I fished the list Kit had given me out of my pocket and scanned it quickly. Then I began making the rounds.

The story was the same at each stop I made. The checks had begun disappearing a while back. The locks on the mailboxes had been broken. After that, the owners of the checks never got a look at them. By the time they went down to pick up the mail, the checks were gone.

I asked why they didn’t keep a closer watch on the boxes, and they all told me the checks never came on the same days. It would have been close to impossible to keep a steady vigil. When I’d finished with the last name on the list, I began wondering just who the hell would commit murder for a pile of checks that couldn’t amount to more than a couple of hundred a week.

And then I began wondering about the people in the neighborhood whose checks weren’t missing. It was a poor neighborhood, and there were certainly more than ten or twelve people who were getting financial aid. I started looking around for the postman again, and I found him going into a tailor shop on First Avenue. I waited until he came out, and then I pulled up alongside him.

“Hi,” I said.

He looked at me and said, “Oh, hi.”

“I suppose you know the names of most everyone on the route, don’t you?”

“Oh, sure,” he said. He reached into the leather bag on his shoulder and pulled out a stack of Christmas cards. “Bitch of a time, Christmas,” he said. “And the tips in this neighborhood are from hunger.”

“Do you know the names of everyone getting welfare checks?”

“Yeah, sure,” he said. “Why?”

I followed him up the steps into the building next to the tailor shop. He stuck his key in the box lock and pulled down the row of boxes. Then he began tossing the letters into the open row.

“I’m checking up on the thefts,” I said.

He stopped dropping mail for a moment, and he looked at me steadily. “You?” he asked.

“Yeah, me.”

He shrugged. “Okay, I know the people getting checks.”

“Have you got a pencil?”

The postman sighed, and then reached into his pocket. “Here,” he said.

I took a scrap of paper from the inside pocket of my jacket, and then said, “Shoot.”

He reeled off the names and addresses, and I wrote them down, He glanced at his watch occasionally, and I realized I was holding him up at the busiest time of the year, but I didn’t let him off the hook until he’d given me all the names. He was not happy when he left me. He glanced at his watch again, grunted, then shouldered his heavy bag and stomped out into the snow.

I stood in the hallway, and I compared the postman’s list with the one Kit had given me. There weren’t as many names as I’d thought there would be. I picked out two that were not on Kit’s, and I went to look them up.

George Kasairus was a thin man with angular black brows and a soiled undershirt. He had a can of beer in his hand when he opened the door to his apartment, and he glared at me belligerently.

“What are you selling?” he asked.

“Christmas cheer,” I said.

He snorted and then took a long drag at the beer can. “I got no time for jokes,” he said.

“I’m looking into the stolen welfare checks,” I told him. “You want to help?”

“My checks ain’t been stolen,” Kasairus said.

“Then you should be willing to cooperate.”

“All right, come on in,” he said.

I followed him into the dingy flat, and he opened a fresh can of beer for himself, not bothering to offer me one. “I don’t know how the hell I can help,” he said.

“Have any of your checks ever been missing?” I asked.

“Yeah, one. A long while back.”

“And none since?”

“No, sir. I’m too smart for that bastard.”

“How so?”

“My check comes on either Wednesday, Thursday or Friday. I’m down by that box early on every one of those mornings. I get the check straight from Frankie.”

“Who’s Frankie?”

“Our postman. He puts it right into the palm of my hand. I eliminate the middleman that way. There’s no bastard who’s going to out-shrewd me when it comes to dough. No, sir.”

“Do you know that a lot of people in the neighborhood are missing checks?”

“Sure, I know.”

“Why haven’t you let them on to your system of beating the game?”

“Screw ’em. It’s every man for himself. They’re too dumb to figure it out, that’s tough. I worry about George Kasairus, and that’s all, and you can bet nobody else is worryin’ about me.”

“You’re a nice guy, Georgie,” I said.

“Sure,” he answered quickly. “What are you, a goddam Good Samaritan or something?”

“I’m the Ghost of Christmas Past, Georgie.”

“Who?”

“Skip it.”

“Just don’t get smart with me, mac.”

“I won’t, Georgie. But I’ll wonder why you’re one of the smart guys whose checks haven’t been lifted. I’ll wonder that, Georgie. You won’t mind, will you?”

Kasairus banged his beer can down on the table top, and then took a fast step toward me. He threw a fist before I realized what was happening, and it caught on my jaw and sent me flying back against the wall.

“Don’t call me no crook!” he shouted. “Don’t call me no goddam crook!”

He came at me again, and this time I shoved out against his chest and sent him sprawling onto the floor. He seemed ready to get up, but he changed his mind when he saw my cocked fists.

“I may be back, Georgie.”

“Drop dead,” he said.

I walked out, and I thought, Drop dead, and it’s only a few days before Christmas. A great goddam world. Peace on earth. Silent night. Drop dead.

I went to the nearest bar, and I drank a few warm-up beers. Then I found a liquor store and bought a gallon of wine. I found a hallway suitable for drinking straight from the bottle.

I toasted Toni first, and I wished her a bloody Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. Then I toasted Parker, and I wished him the same thing. I toasted Kit O’ Donnell and all her troubles, and all the poor bastards whose piddling checks were being stolen. And then, I toasted Santa Claus and the State of New York, and Washington, D. C., and the President.

The super of the building kicked me out of the hallway, but I held onto the jug of wine as I reeled down the street singing, “Deck the halls with boughs of holly, fa-la-la-la-la, la-la, la-la.…”

I passed a Santa Claus with an iron pot, and I poured a little of the wine into the pot and said, “Drink up, Nick. Put some goddam color back into your beard.”

I stopped everyone I saw and offered them a drink, and they all laughed in that slightly patronizing way, and patted me on the back.

I sang four choruses of Deck the Halls, and then I batted out a few refrains of God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen. I kept thinking of George Kasairus all the way. A good Samaritan, he’d called me, and then he’d ordered me to drop dead.

That was the trouble with this little old goddam world. Too many good Samaritans dropping dead. The meek inherited the earth, all right, six feet of it, underground.

Like poor Andy Traconni, who got the breath squeezed out of him because he wanted to protect the lousy little check he got each week.

Well, the hell with Andy, and the hell with Kasairus, and all the rest. It was almost Christmas, and it was no time to be chasing checks around the city. Nobody gives a damn about poor George Kasairus, and nobody gives a damn about goddam Curt Cannon, either, that’s for sure. So I drank the gallon, and God damn it, I really felt in a holiday mood. I scrounged some more dimes from the people in the street, and it was easy because, hell, it was Christmas time. Then I bought another gallon and I started on that one, singing all the way, and the last song I sang was Jingle Bells, and then I was lying in the snow with the empty jug beside me, and all was well with the world.

“Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way.

Oh what fun it is to ride

In a one-horse open slay-eigh …”

The singing was somewhere near me. I pried open my eyes and looked for it, and the song went on and on, and the bells jingled inside my head. The snow under me had melted, and the front of my shirt and jacket were soaking wet. My feet were cold, and my face was cold, and I sat up and began thumping my hands against my sides. Where the hell was I, and what the hell day was it?

I got to my feet, and I stopped the first guy who passed.

“What day is it?” I asked.

“Christmas Eve,” he said, and then he hurried off, his arms full of Christmas packages.

I washed a hand over my face, and I thought, Christmas Eve, and no checks for Andy Traconni.

I reached into my pocket and found the list the postman had given me, and then I looked for the nearest clock. I found it in a bar. I had a shot of bourbon to wash off the taste, and when I left the bar, it was three-thirty in the afternoon. I headed directly for a man named Juan Diaz, a man who still received his checks in spite of the wholesale thefts.

Juan Diaz was small, with dark black hair and friendly brown eyes. There was a Christmas tree on top of the radio cabinet in his living room. The apartment was shabby, but it smelled warm, and I could hear the excited babble of children’s voices coming from the kitchen.

“Hello,” Diaz said, “Hello. Merr’ Chreestmas. Come in.”

I walked into the apartment, and a smile formed on my face unconsciously. There weren’t many presents around the tree, nor was the tree expensively decorated. But a big picture of Santa had been hung on the wall mirror and small figures depicting the birth at Bethlehem were under the tree. The radiators whistled piping hot, and the smell of popcorn and baked apples drifted from the kitchen.

“You get welfare checks, Mr. Diaz?” I asked.

“Sí,” he said. “Yes, I do.”

“Have any been stolen?”

“One,” he said. “Only one. Then I smart up. Thees crook, he ees fast, but Juan Diaz, he be faster. I meet Frankie do’nstairs when I theenk check should come. Sometime I go down every day, so not to miss it. I get heem, all right. Ever’ week.” Diaz paused. “Man, you got to live!”

“This first one that was stolen,” I said. “How?”

“The lock. He snap heem. But no more.”

“Now Frankie gives you the check, huh?”

“Good boy, Frankie. I geeve him dreenk for Chreestmas. Good boy, Frankie.” Diaz grinned, showing bright white teeth. “You want dreenk, hey?”

“No,” I said. “Thanks a lot.”

“Well, Merr’ Chreestmas,” Diaz said.

“Same to you.”

He closed the door behind me, and I stood in the warmth of the hallway for a moment, listening to the voices of the kids behind the doors. Well, two of them had learned how to beat the system. Just get to the check before the thief did. The rest were either too lazy or too stupid or too drunk to realize that was the only way to beat it. So the thief swiped the checks each week, and through fear, they kept their mouths shut. And now, with Andy Traconni dead, they’d never report the thefts in a million years.

I went down into the street. The snow had turned black with the churning of automobile tires and shoe soles. I walked, with the wind sharp and the cold a living thing that gnawed and bit, and I thought it all over. Then I got my idea, and I started looking in earnest.

I found him in another hallway. The hallway was hot. The radiators sang their torrid songs, and he worked with the sweat pouring down his face.

“Hello, Frankie,” I said.

The mailman looked up. “You again,” he answered. “Look, mister, I got enough headaches. This is Christmas Eve, and I want to get home, you know? Let me work in peace, will you?”

“The missing checks, Frankie.”

“Yeah, what about them?”

“Have you cashed them yet?”

Frankie turned, his hands on the leather strap of his bag. “What!”

“Nobody else, Frankie. Couldn’t be. You snapped the locks the first time to make it look like an outsider was rifling the boxes after the checks were delivered. After that, smooth sailing. When the suckers asked if you’d delivered the checks, you said sure. But those checks never reached the boxes. Except where the sucker was smart enough to wait for the check. And then you had to deliver.”

“Go away, bum,” Frankie said. “You’re drunk.”

“Andy Traconni was a sucker who woke up, Frankie. He began watching your deliveries. He watched, and he saw that you damn well never delivered his checks. He probably asked you if you had, and you said yes. Last week, he was fairly certain. This week, he made sure. He watched again, and when the check didn’t come, he accused you.”

“Listen …”

I expected him to say more, but he cut himself short and swung the leather bag up by the strap, swinging it at my head, in the same way he’d probably swung it when Andy accused him. I dodged the bag, and I leaped forward, grabbing his throat in my hands and ramming him against the wall.

“Did you cash the checks, you bastard?” I yelled.

“I needed the dough, Jesus, there are guys make eight, nine hundred dollars on a route during Christmas. I needed the dough, I tell you. I figured …”

“Did you cash the checks yet?”

“I ain’t figured how to do that yet. I … look mac, let’s forget this. Let’s forget all about it. I’ll split the dough with you. I’ll …”

I slammed the back of my hand across his mouth. “Take me to the checks,” I said.

Frankie spat blood, and then shook his head. “Sure,” he said.

I got the checks, and then I delivered him to the police. I bought a pint of bourbon, and then I delivered the checks personally, and each time I delivered one, I said, “Merry Christmas.”

I felt good when I finished. I felt good because all the faces that greeted those checks were smiling and happy. I went out into the street, wondering if I should drop in on Kit O’Donnell, say hello maybe, exchange greetings. And then it started snowing again, so I drank the bourbon a few nips at a time, and I watched the flakes, and when I finally boarded the Third Avenue El heading for the Bowery, the conductor said, “Merry Christmas, fellow,” and I just smiled and didn’t say anything.

THE END

of a Gold Medal Original Collection by

CURT CANNON

About the Author

Ed McBain is one of the many pen names of legendary author Evan Hunter (1926–2005). Named a Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America, Hunter is best known for creating the long-running 87th Precinct series, which followed an ensemble cast of police officers in the fictional city of Isola. A pioneer of the police procedural, he remains one of the best-loved mystery novelists of the twentieth century. Hunter also wrote under the pseudonyms Richard Marsten, Hunt Collins, John Abbott, Ezra Hannon, Curt Cannon, and others.

All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

“Die Hard,” “Dead Men Don’t Dream,” “Now Die In It,” “Good and Dead,” “The Death of Me” Copyright 1953, Flying Eagle Publications, Inc.

“Deadlier Than the Mail” Copyright 1954, Flying Eagle Publications, Inc.

Copyright © 1958 by Ed McBain

Cover design by Jason Gabbert

ISBN: 978-1-5040-3920-8

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