Survival... ZERO!

I let a curse slip across my lips because Lippy himself had given me the answer. What was it? Yeah ... ?No reason, Mike ...no reason.' And at a time like that a guy just doesn't lie.

But he had called for me and without having to say it, told me not to let him go out like that, a nothing nobody with a first name the world would never remember, but with that single phone call he had begged me not to let him be just another statistic in the massive book of records the great city keeps for its unrecognizables.

All right, Lippy. You are a somebody. Get off my back, will you? Maybe you didn't think there was a reason, but somebody else sure as hell had a good one for killing you.

I slid off the bed and picked my hat off the floor, then got to my feet and walked to the door. To the empty

room I said, 'Mike, you're getting old. The edge is off. You're missing something. It's right here and you're missing it.'

The super popped the door open before I even knocked. I walked in past him to the couch against the wall, pulled the cushions off and unzipped the covers. Inside was a foam rubber pad and nothing else. I turned it over and felt around the burlap and canvas bottom, but there was nothing there either. I knew the cops had gone through the same routine so I wasn't really expecting to find anything anyway. When I finished I left it like it was and looked at the slob with the half-empty beer can who was hating me with his eyes. 'Put it back where you got it,' I said.

'Look, I had to clean ...'

'Ill clean you, buddy. I'll turn you inside out and let the whole neighborhood watch while I'm doing it.'

'Nobody even paid me ...'

'You want it now?' I asked him.

The beer can fell out of his hand and he belched. Another second and he was going to get sick.

'Put it back,' I told him again.

Jenkins and Wiley were ten minutes away from being off duty, having coffee in Raul Toule's basement hideaway. I pulled a chair out with my foot, waved for Raul to bring me a beer and sat down. Jenkins curled his beefy face up into a grin and said, 'Ain't it great being a private investigator? He don't have to drink coffee. He gets a beer. Just like that. How's it going, Mike?'

'So-so. I just came out of Lippy's place.'

Wiley nodded and took a sip of coffee. 'Yeah, we got the word. Mumpy Henley spotted you getting out of the cab. Ever since you busted him on that assault rap he'd like to peg you. Doing anything illegal, Mike?'

'Certainly.'

'That's good. Just do it to the right people.'

'I try.' I took my beer from Raul and downed half of it. 'You guys get anything?'

Jenkins ran his hand through his mop of hair and shook his head. 'Dead end. You know what we got in an eight-block area this past month? Four kills, eight rapes, fourteen burglaries and nine muggings. That's just what was reported.'

'Should keep you guys pretty busy.'

'Natch. We solved six murders, none of the rapes wanted to prosecute, two burglars were apprehended, one by an old woman with a shotgun and another by Sid Cohen's kid .. . and those two bragged about a hundred something they pulled around here. Only that crazy Swede policewoman nailed a mugger. She broke his arm. Nice place to live, but don't try to visit.'

I said, 'What about Lippy?'

Wiley fingered some potato chips out of the bowl in front of him and stuffed them in his mouth. 'Not a damn thing. His employers vouch for him, the few neighborhood places he did business with give him an okay, nobody can figure out any reason why he should have been knocked off like that, so what's to say? Most everybody around here thinks it was some nut. It wouldn't have been the first time.'

'How long you figure on staying on it?' I asked them.

'Not much left to do unless we get a break,' Jenkins said. 'Now we wait. If it was a psycho he'll probably hit again. Trouble is with that kind, you never know what they're going to do.'

'It wasn't any psycho,' I told him quietly.

They both looked at me, waiting.

'Just something I feel,' I added. 'You saw the lab reports. The place was searched.'

'For what?' Wiley finished his coffee and pushed his cup away. 'Your friend didn't have anything worth looking for.'

'Somebody thought he did.'

'Well, if they make anything out of those two sets of prints, we may get lucky. Look, I'm going to call in. Who's buying?'

I grinned at him and picked up the tab. Wiley fished a dime out of his pocket and went to the phone booth while I paid the bill. When he came back he had an amused frown on his face. 'You could have been right, Mike.'

'Oh?'

'Lippy did have something worth looking for only it wasn't in his room. Captain Chambers took a flyer and checked the local banks. Lippy had over twenty-seven hundred bucks in the Commerce National. Odd deposits every so often. No specific amounts.'

'Nobody found a bankbook on him,' I said.

'It was in his locker where he worked. He had it stuck under a batch of order forms. So now we have a motive.'

'Murder for that kind of money?' I asked him.

'Hell, around here you could buy a dozen kills for that.'

Siderman's Wholesale Groceries was a busy little place filled with the tangy odors of a farmhouse pantry with all the activity of an anthill. Young Joe Siderman led me back to his office, tossed me an apple and told me to sit down.

'Tough about Lippy,' he said. 'He was a good guy. They know who did it yet?'

I shook my head. 'The police think somebody knew about that twenty-seven hundred he had saved up and maybe had it in his room.'

'Crazy world, ain't it?'

'You see that bankbook of his?'

'Sure, I found it in his stuff. Nobody woulda known about it for months maybe if that Captain Chambers didn't get me poking around for it.'

'Remember any of the deposits?'

'You know me, Mike. I'm a nosy bastard, so sure, I took a look. Like mostly from ten to fifty bucks each time. No special dates of deposits though. Sometimes twice a week, sometimes once.'

'Lippy make that much here?'

Joe shined his apple on his sleeve and took a bite of it. 'So we pay minimum wages for his job. It wasn't exactly skilled help. Lippy took home maybe sixty bucks a week. He never made no complaints about it. I don't know how he coulda saved that much these days. He didn't handle no cash here so he wasn't hitting the till. Maybe he played the horses.'

'Nobody's that lucky, Joe.'

'He got it from somewhere.'

'Think maybe one of the others he worked with would know?'

'Doubt it. He got along good with everybody, but he never really buddied up to nobody special.'

'Screwy,' I said. 'Why would he keep a bankbook stashed here?'

'That ain't unusual,' Joe told me. 'Half these guys what live in furnished rooms ain't got no families and think the job's their home. A coupla guys keep everything in their lockers here. Hell, Lippy even had his Army discharge and his rent receipts in that box. You want me to ask around a little? Maybe somebody knew him better than I thought.'

'I'd appreciate it,' I said. I tossed one of my business cards on his desk. 'You can reach me here if anything