“It may have been the way that jerk says once, but that was a long time ago. What's a few dollars to me? At my age, what I was getting there I appreciate.” He tried to outstare Johnny. “You think I'm lying to you?”
Tiny pulled out from the curb without even a by-your-leave, and Johnny winced as the squeal of brakes and the blat of a horn sounded simultaneously from behind them. Tiny never even looked around. At the first light a cab pulled up alongside and the driver leaned over and rolled down his window. Tiny turned his head and looked at him, and the cabbie rolled his window back up without saying a word.
“I'm wonderin' what I'd hear about you an' Arends if I asked around a little,” Johnny said to Harry Palmer. “It just come to me I been takin' you on faith, man.”
“Don't you think the police have taken care of that?” Palmer snapped. He leaned forward and rapped on the glass that divided the front and back seats to within eight inches of the car's ceiling. “Let me out at the Circle, Tiny,” he called, and sat back as Tiny nodded. “He'll take you down to the hotel,” the little man added sulkily. He folded his arms and stared straight ahead at the road.
They rode in silence until Tiny pulled in at Columbus Circle. Harry Palmer got out hurriedly as though to forestall any further attempt at conversation. He trotted off without a backward glance.
Tiny started off again and headed down Seventh Avenue. “I was up t' Dmitri's d' udder day,” he rumbled from the front seat in the familiar, breathy hoarseness. “I ast 'im how he rated us. You know w'at he said?”
“No,” Johnny said shortly. He had other things than Dmitri on his mind.
“He said on da mat wit' th' strangle barred I'm six to five.” Tiny cut around a cab picking up a passenger, forcing the car in the next lane to pull up abruptly. “I tol' him he's crazy. I got t' be better'n six to five over a jerk never made his livin' at it. Right?” Johnny made no reply. Tiny evidently expected none. “Th' kicker an' th' t'ing made me laff is that crazy Rooshian's sayin' wit' nothin' barred, I'm only five t' eight. I tol' him, nuts, man, I want-”
“You're in the wrong lane,” Johnny interrupted as they crossed 50th. “You got to go east on Forty-fourth an' circle the block.”
Tiny might never have heard him. “I tol' him I can use a little of that five t' eight, mebbe more'n a little. Any time I outweigh a man fi'ty poun's an' he lays me eight t' five I got to see it.” Approaching 45th, the Continental slowed.
“Another block!” Johnny said sharply. “An' left, not right!”
“Sure,” Tiny said, and swung right on 45th.
“You goddam-” Johnny sucked in his breath as it came to him. He reached for a doorhandle. Locked. Front- seat mechanism. Tiny was watching him in the rear-view mirror as they crossed Eighth Avenue. Grimly Johnny took off his jacket, unbuttoned his collar, and rolled up his sleeves.
“'At's a boy,” Tiny approved hoarsely from the front seat. “In fi' minutes now I want t' see how mucha that eight t' five you're layin'.” Catching all the lights, the Continental sailed across Ninth, Tenth and Eleventh. It threaded its way between trucks loading on both sides of the street from narrow warehouse platforms, nosed out under the elevated highway at the wharves, turned left on the cobblestones, and almost at once turned sharp right and darted into a narrow opening that widened as the cobblestones gave way to crushed stone.
Tiny swung the big car in a circle and stopped it with the driver's side nearest the lane by which they'd entered. He got out and stretched, reached in and touched a button on the dash. “You c'n git out now, hardhead.”
Johnny climbed out on the side opposite. In this neighborhood of busy loadings and unloadings of the world's largest liners, he wouldn't have believed it possible for this still, deserted dock with its splintery planking and rotting pilings to exist. “This Palmer's idea?” he asked tightly as he came around the front of the Lincoln.
Tiny covered his nose with a massive paw. “The boss gimme th' office when ya got in th' car ya had a big nose,” he said solemnly. “I been tellin' 'im that. You go inta dry dock a while, chum, as of now.”
He advanced ponderously, crouched forward, arms semi-circled. The stone crunched under his shuffling feet. Johnny circled, to his right, just outside the reaching arms. Tiny pursued patiently, in a narrowing orbit. Johnny speeded up suddenly. Tiny's upper body pivoted to face him, but the legs floundered. In the second the man- mountain was off balance Johnny smashed the heel of his shoe against Tiny's left knee. There was a loud pop. When the pursuing man's entire weight came down on that leg he went down like a falling tree. He lay in the crushed stone, wheezing.
Johnny walked around him to face him. “That was your kneecap, sucker,” he said in a hard voice. “Satisfied, or should I get a tire iron out of the trunk an' take a few divots out of your thick skull?”
His face gray and perspiration beading his broad forehead, Tiny muscled himself up on his forearms. “Jus' lemme get muh han's on ya, pal.” He tried to drag his great weight forward.
“Ahhh-” Johnny said disgustedly. He walked away, toward the Lincoln. “I'll send somebody in here after you. If you're plannin' on walkin' again, quit draggin' that knee.”
He drove out onto the cobblestones. At the corner of 44th he leaned out to tell a blue uniform he'd heard a man hollering behind the fence across the street. The cop took in the Lincoln in one all-encompassing glance and started across the street.
Johnny drove to the Duarte and parked in front, illegally at that time of day. In the lobby he ran into Gus. “Who's on the beat?” he asked the black-haired Greek.
“Desmond. Why?”
“I left a Lincoln out front. Tell him to use up his book of tickets on it.”
He went upstairs to his room for a drink.
CHAPTER XII
Twilight had come and gone before Johnny's vigil outside the precinct station house was rewarded by the appearance of Detective James Rogers in his unmarked black sedan. Johnny stepped from his doorway and walked rapidly to the car as Rogers parked in the only open space in the block, squarely beside a fire hydrant. The sedan's wheels were still moving when Johnny opened the door on the passenger's side and slid into the front seat.
The nose dipped as Rogers instinctively hit the brake. “Well, well, well!” he exclaimed sarcastically. “Isn't it fortunate that I'm the cool, even-tempered type who looks first before he shoots? That kind of an entrance can get you lead dimples.”
“Or a night stick behind the ear? How's my friend Cuneo?”
“Johnny, I want to talk to you.” The detective swung about on the seat until he was facing Johnny squarely. “You're going to get yourself so thoroughly-”
“I hear you're acquirin' a taste for French Seventy-fives, Jimmy,” Johnny interrupted.
“You hear a hell of a lot that's none of your business,” the sandy-haired man said acidly. “I'm warning-”
Johnny interrupted again. “You get a decent description from anyone of the guy that stepped from the car to break up Madeleine Winters?”
The detective was silent a moment before replying. “Man Mountain Dean, without the whiskers,” he said finally.
Johnny nodded. “How many arrests you made, Jimmy?” At Rogers' flat stare he grinned. “Like Perry Mason, I'll rephrase the question. Would you like to make one?”
“What do you know, Johnny?”
“Your Forty-fourth Street beat man at the wharves found a guy in a lot this afternoon with a flat wheel. You find out what hospital he sent him to, an' you toddle on over there an' tell the guy in the bed his boss is swearin' out a warrant accusin' his ex-employee of the assault. You might get some action.”
Detective Rogers' regard of Johnny was unwinking. “Who is his boss?”
“Harry Palmer.”
The resulting silence lasted fifteen seconds before the detective spoke again. “Motive?”
“Blackmail. Long-time.”
“I'll send someone over,” Roger said. He glanced at his watch. “I've a nine o'clock appointment myself.”
“Send a fast talker,” Johnny cautioned.
“Bob Hope's understudy,” the detective promised. “Well pick up Palmer, too. Would it do me any good to
