Survival... ZERO!

the idea that Lippy was friendly with a guy upstairs who used to have a beer with him now and then. He moved out a week ago. No forwarding address.'

'And the other set?'

'We're running them through R and I now. If we don't have anything, Washington may come up with a lead.'

'You're sure going to a lot of trouble,' I said.

'Murders are murders. We're not concerned with a pedigree.'

'This is old Mike you're jazzing now, friend. You're making like it was a prime project.'

Pat waited a minute, his face tight, then: 'You holding back, Mike?'

'For Pete's sake, what the hell kind of a deal is this? So I knew the guy. We weren't roommates. You get a lousy kill in your lap and right away you got me slanted for working an angle. Come off it.'

'Okay, relax. But don't say I haven't got just cause, kid. Knowing a guy's enough to get you kicking around and that's just what I don't want.'

'Balls.'

'All right,' he told me, 'we checked Lippy out ... his employers gave him a clean bill. He worked hard at a low-paying job, never any absenteeism, he was a friendly, well-liked guy ... no previous history of trouble, didn't drink, gamble, and he paid his bills. He got himself killed, but he had memorized your number beforehand.'

Pat stopped for a second and I said, 'Go on.'

'The lab came up with something else. There were traces of tape adhesive around his mouth. Nobody heard him yell because he didn't. Your friend Lippy was gagged, tortured and finally stabbed to death. The way we reconstructed it was that the killer simply walked in off the street, knocked on the door, was admitted, knocked Lippy out, searched the place and when he didn't find what he was after, took him apart with a knife.'

I looked at Pat curiously and said, 'Nice, real nice. Why don't you fill in the holes? I was there too.'

Pat nodded and sat back again, still watching me. 'There was a contusion behind Lippy's ear that apparently came from a padded billy. Certain articles were out of position indicating a search of the premises. Or did you poke around?'

'A little,' I admitted. 'I didn't disturb anything.'

'This was a search. Expert, but noticeable.'

'For what?'

'That's what I'd like to know.' I got another one of those long searching looks again. 'He was your friend, Mike. What aren't you telling me?'

'Man, you're a hard one to convince.'

'Let the details filter upstairs to one of those new bright boys in the D.A.'s office and they'll be even harder to convince. Right now there's not much noise because Lippy wasn't much of a guy, but somebody's going to read these reports, and somebody's going to start making waves. And, friend, they'll break right over your head.'

'Once more around the track, Pat,' I said. 'You know everything I know. Just hope those prints show something. If I can think of anything you'll get it fast and in triplicate. Who's assigned to the case?'

'Jenkins and Wiley. They?ve been drawing all blanks too. Nobody saw or heard anything. Wiley's been using an informer we have on the block and the guy says the talk is square. The oddballs are coming and going in that neighborhood all the time and nobody pays any attention to them. They might come up with a lead, but the longer it takes the slimmer the chances are.'

'Sorry about that.'

Pat grunted and gave me a relieved grin. 'Okay, pal. I don't like to lay it on either. I guess there can be one kill in the city that doesn't have to have you involved in it.'

I stood up and put on my hat. 'Hell,' I said, 'I'm too old for that crap any more anyway.'

He gave me another of those unintelligible grunts and nodded thoughtfully. 'Yeah, sure you are,' he said.

The cabbie wanted to edge out of the heavy traffic so he cut over to Eighth Avenue going north and stayed in the fire lane, making the lights at a leisurely pace. I cranked the window down and let the thick air of the city slap at the side of my face, heavy with smells from the sidewalk markets, laced with the acrid tang of exhaust fumes that belched out of laboring trucks and buses. The voice of the city kept up its incessant growl, like a dog who didn't know whom to pick on and settled on everybody in general. Most people out there never even heard the voice, I thought. Even the smells were the natural condition of things. Someday I was going to get the hell out of here. I was glad I had nothing to do about Lippy. So he was a guy I knew. I knew lots of guys. Some were alive. Some were dead.

Then we were almost at Forty-sixth Street and I wondered who the hell I thought I was fooling and told the driver to pull over and let me out. I handed him a couple of singles, slammed the door, watched him pull away and crossed the street over to where Lippy Sullivan had died such a messy death. All I could say to myself was, 'Damn!?

CHAPTER 2

The fat little super who smelled of sweat and beer didn't give me any lip this time. It wasn't because of the first time or because he had seen me there in the midst of the homicide squad with a gold shield cop my buddy. It was because I was the same kind of New York he was, only from a direction he was afraid of. There was nothing he could put his finger on; a squawk wouldn't bother me and could hurt him, and if he didn't play it nice and easy he could play it hard and get himself squeezed.

So he played it right and whined how he had told everything he knew which wasn't anything at all and let me into Lippy's room with his passkey, idly complaining about how he had to clean up the mess that had been left around before the flies got into it and the stink got worse than it was. Nobody paid him extra and the damn nosy cops wouldn't let him rent the room out until the investigation was over and he was losing a commission.

I shoved him out of the room, slammed the door in his face and flipped the overhead light on with my elbow. The stain was still there on the floor, but the sawdust was gone and so was the chalked outline of Lippy's body. And so was Lippy's new couch. I had seen it in the super's apartment when he had opened the door for me.

There wasn't anything special to look for. The cops had done all that. What I wanted was to know Lippy just a little bit better. I could remember a skinny little kid with a banana stalk in a street fight, swinging it out against the Peterstown bunch, then the soda bottle collection to pay for the six stitches the doctor over Delaney's Drugstore had to put in his eyebrow. Some stupid sergeant gave him a B.A.R. to tote during the war and he hauled it all over Europe until he finally got a medal for using it in the right place at the right time. Then he just went back to being Lippy Sullivan again with nobody except the Internal

Revenue Service and me ever knowing his real first name, and now he was dead.

So long, Lippy. Wish I had known you better. Maybe I will.

I had been in too many pads like this not to pick up the little signs. It wasn't what was there. It was what wasn't. There was that little Spartan touch that flipped you right back into an Army barracks where what you had you kept in your pocket. Lippy had been here almost two years and he hadn't collected anything at all. The shade on the lamp had been patched and painted to match the fabric, the old chair in the corner had been repaired where it was possible and the cracks in the plastered walls had been grouted to keep the roaches contained and the drafts out.

The one cupboard held an assortment of chili, hash, a half-dozen eggs, some canned vegetables, two boxes of salt and an oversized can of pepper. Lippy didn't exactly live high off the hog. But then again, he didn't ask for much, either. He sure didn't ask to get killed.

I took my time and went through his stuff piece by piece and wound up wondering what he had that made him valuable enough to die like he did. There wasn't one damn place he could have hidden anything and not the slightest sign that he even tried.

Yet somebody had sliced him up to make him talk.

Without thinking I sat on the edge of his bed, then stretched out and folded my hands behind my head and looked at the ceiling. It was a lousy bed but a lot better than what we had in the Army sometimes. Come on, Lippy, what was it? Did you have something? Did you see something? Why remember my phone number?