situation would become a lot stickier.
He followed on Savino's heels down a long, polished-stone corridor. Closed doors on both sides bore silver- lettered glass panels labeled City Engineer, City Clerk, City Health Department, City Council Meetingroom, City Tax Office. Savino's pace outdistanced Collins and the van driver. A red neon arrow with the word POLICE beneath it pointed down a short flight of stairs. Savino ran down them with Johnny right behind him. They burst out into a brightly lighted room with a high desk behind which sat a hard-faced uniformed sergeant.
Johnny made it his business to beat Savino to the desk. “I want to prefer charges against this man,” he said. He tossed the broken knife up on the desk. “That thing had four more inches on it when I took it away from him.”
“I'll prefer the goddamn charges,” Savino blurted thickly. His handsome features were pale with anger. Dried blood crusted a corner of his mouth. “Where's Riley?” he demanded.
The sergeant nodded silently to an unmarked door at the rear of the room. Savino wheeled and walked to it, entering without knocking. The desk man glanced back at the stairs as Collins and the driver rattled down them. “I brought 'em in, Sarge,” Collins puffed. “Fightin' on the street.” He pointed at Johnny. “He started it.”
“He's preferring charges against Savino,” the sergeant said. His face was expressionless. He held up the broken knife. “Claims he took this away from him.”
“I didn't see nothin' like that,” Collins said. “First I saw this guy hit Savino in the mouth an' flattened him.”
“Then why'd you arrest Savino?” Johnny asked him. “Just to give him a shot at me in the van?”
Cold blue eyes looked down on Johnny from behind the high desk. “I don't see any marks on you,” the sergeant said. “Any witnesses to your story?”
“Three,” Johnny lied easily.
The blue eyes shifted to Collins who looked suddenly uneasy. “I'm tellin' you what I saw, Sarge.” He bore down heavily on the personal pronoun. “I didn't-”
He stopped as the door at the rear of the room behind which Savino had disappeared opened quickly. A big man in an impressive uniform filled the doorway. He was both tall and wide. There was barely enough room in the doorway to see Tommy Savino standing in the room behind him with a smirk on his face. Johnny looked at the scrambled egg motif on the big man's uniform cap and the bulge of crumpled white shirt overflowing the belt buckle visible via the unbuttoned jacket. “What is it, McDonough?” the man in the doorway asked.
“Street fight, Chief,” the desk sergeant replied. “Collins brought-”
“Book that one,” the chief interrupted him, looking at Johnny for the first time. “I'll talk to him later.”
McDonough held up the broken knife. “He's preferring-”
“I said book him.” The chief left the doorway and headed for the stairs. Savino followed, grinning.
“I guess right about here is where I get to make my phone call,” Johnny said to Sergeant McDonough. The sergeant cut his eyes toward the stairs, Johnny saw that the chief had halted on the second step. It wasn't likely this crew would let him make an outside phone call but they should be curious as to whom he wanted to make it.
There was no sound from the stairs. With no change of expression McDonough stood up behind the desk. He lifted a phone over the top of it and handed it down to Johnny, stand and all. “Make it snappy, pal,” he said.
One look explained the generosity. It wasn't a dial phone. They could hear the name or the number he asked the operator to get for him and still have plenty of time to retrieve the phone before the connection could be made.
Johnny lifted the receiver. “Mayor Lowell's office,” he said to the switchboard operator's inquiry. Above his head Sergeant McDonough glanced quickly at the stairs.
“Break that up!” the chief barked.
McDonough yanked hard on the cord going over the top of his desk. Johnny had anticipated it. Nothing happened. The sergeant leaned down over the front of the desk. Johnny backed away as far as he could get but the cord wouldn't let him get far enough. “Tell the mayor-” Johnny said to the new feminine voice on the line and paused to lower his head as. McDonough punched down at him. Instead of hitting him in the face the sergeant hit him in the forehead. It drove Johnny back a step but he retained his grip on the phone. “-that I'm a friend of his brother Toby's an' that your cops are givin' me a hard time at headquarters. Tell him-” McDonough's roundhouse right landed on Johnny's cheekbone despite his effort to evade it. McDonough's grunt was clearly audible. “Tell him to get down here,” Johnny said rapidly. He dropped to one knee to avoid McDonough's follow-up smash. He bobbed up instantly, slapped the receiver into the cradle and threw the telephone over the desk, hard. It hit McDonough squarely in the chest. “Thanks for the use of your phone, Mac,” Johnny told him as the sergeant went backward into his chair with a crash.
Chief Riley was halfway toward the desk from the stairs. “Did he get that call through?” he demanded of no one in particular. He didn't wait for an answer. Dark blood flared in the wide, moon face as he glared at Johnny. He looked big but he looked soft, too, Johnny thought. “We'll fix your clock, mister,” the chief said to him harshly. “We know how to take care of wise guys around here. You won't be so lucky the next time.” He half-turned to look back up the stairs at the sound of rapidly descending footsteps. “You're going to find your umbrella's got a hell of a leak in it.”
He stalked back into his office, slamming the door.
Mayor Richard Lowell clattered briskly down the stairs and into the room. He looked exactly like his picture, Johnny thought, except on a larger scale. The head was large and crested with a cockatoo-like white pompadour. It commanded instant attention. The strong face gave a lion-like appearance to the average-sized physique. “You called my office?” he demanded of Johnny and without waiting for an answer swung to the desk. “What about this, McDonough?”
The gray-faced sergeant climbed laboriously to his feet. He stood half-doubled over. “Wise-bastard-” he got out between his teeth. His breath whistled on the sibilants. “Hit me-with the phone-”
“I asked you what happened here.” The mayor glanced from McDonough to Johnny, his expression curious. “Was Riley here? Where is he now?”
Johnny pointed at the closed door. He realized for the first time that Tommy Savino had disappeared. Lowell started to say something, hesitated, took Johnny by the arm and led him to a corner. “Who are you?” he asked in an undertone. “What took place here?”
“I'd like to talk to you about it. Privately,” Johnny said.
“Why should you want to talk to me?” Lowell sounded suspicious. He had a rich, beautifully polished speaking voice. Every syllable was produced with a vocal flourish. “And what's this business of your being a friend of Toby's?”
“I talked to Toby yesterday afternoon.”
“You did?” Mayor Lowell kindled. “Did Toby send you up here?” His voice had risen; he lowered it immediately. “Did they find it out?”
“What kind of a town are you runnin' here?” Johnny asked in his turn. “Or aren't you runnin' it at all? These guys like to had my ears nailed to the wall.”
Angry color invaded Richard Lowell's patrician features. “I hope I'm running this town!” he blustered.
“I hope so, too, but some people don't seem to have gotten the message. I was in town an hour an' I was jumped on the street by a man named Savino. He an' a cop with him had a wagon handy to roll me in here. I had trouble keepin' 'em off me in the wagon.” Johnny fingered a rising lump on his left cheekbone. “I had more trouble gettin' to talk to you. Is all that a part of the town you're runnin'? An' does Toby know about it?”
Without a word the mayor turned and strode to the door through which Chief Riley had exited. He went right on in without bothering to knock. He closed the door behind him. Johnny returned his attention to the desk. McDonough sat down, his blue eyes glaring down malevolently at Johnny, but he said nothing.
The silence lasted until the mayor rushed out of the chief's office, banging the door behind him. Storm signals darkened his face. “We can talk upstairs,” he said curtly to Johnny.
Behind the desk McDonough rose to his feet again. He looked torn the closed door to the mayor. “Hold up a minute,” he protested. “Nobody's told me what to do with the charge against-”
“The second thing you can do with it,” Richard Lowell interrupted him with a vicious clarity in the mellow voice, “is tear it up.” Without a backward glance he led the way to the stairs and Johnny followed him.
On the upper level they walked to the front of the building and a door marked OFFICE OF THE MAYOR.
