Daddario hang out when he's not dictatin' legislation for the city council to rubber-stamp?”
“He has a real-estate office a block off Main on Beacon.” Mrs. Peterson wagged her head disapprovingly. “I'll predict a building's going to fall on you. It's happened to better men in this town.”
“Better maybe, but not as lucky,” Johnny told her. “Beacon off Main. Right. Jimmy boy, break out the Sevres china. Two lumps. No cream, thank you.” He grinned at his landlady, did an exuberant little time step, and ran lightly down the stairs.
The real-estate office was larger than Johnny expected. From the sidewalk he could see a half-dozen desks behind a long counter. In one corner a private office with a frosted-glass door was partitioned off from the remaining floor space. There was no sign of Daddario. Two middle-aged women sprang to their feet from behind their desks as Johnny entered. “Yes, sir?” they chorused alertly. “Is there something-?”
A hand fell on Johnny's shoulder before he could speak. “I'll take care of it, girls,” Jigger Krata's heavy voice said. Johnny shook off the hand as he turned. Kratz had been sitting in a chair to the right of the entrance where he could look at the customers before they could spot him. Johnny noticed that up close there was a yellowish cast to the big man's eyes. Kratz studied him incuriously. “What's your business here, Killain?”
“I'm here to talk to Daddario.” Johnny leaned back with his elbows on the counter top cluttered with maps, pictures, brochures, staplers, ballpoint pens and boxes of paper clips.
“Jim's not here.” Kratz smiled a heavy-lipped smile, disclosing strong, gapped teeth.
“Maybe he's in there.” Johnny nodded at the private office.
“You're a little slow today, sonny,” Kratz said amiably. “To you he's not here, period.” He sounded bored.
Johnny turned as if to look at the office again. His right hand closed on a stapler. “Get him out here, Kratz. Before I go in there after him.”
“You could be a little big for your britches, Killain.” Kratz's voice was still mild. “This is a place of business and Jim's a busy man. You'd better run along.”
“Yeah?” Johnny pivoted and threw the stapler at the frosted-glass door of the partitioned-off office. The panel shattered in a burst of glass fragments. Muffled shrieks rose from the women behind the counter as Kratz charged. Johnny nailed him with a good left to the body on the way in. It didn't even slow him down. Arms like cable hawsers grappled with Johnny as they came together hard and thudded into the counter, half-sprawled along its top. Bracing his legs against Kratz's efforts to force him off his feet, Johnny sank both hands out of sight in the thick-set body. Kratz growled wordlessly and redoubled his attempt to force Johnny backward over the counter.
“Jigger! JIGGER!” The harsh voice cut like a sword. Johnny and Kratz eased back from each other cautiously as Jim Daddario stood in the office doorway, his face black with anger. Glass crunched under his feet. His expression turned even more choleric when he recognized Johnny. “Get in here,” he snapped. “Both of you.”
He stood aside to let them in, closed the door and drew a yellow curtain that restored some semblance of privacy. “Boss,” Kratz began.
“Shut up!” Daddario barked. “How many times do I have to tell you I want no donnybrooks around here?” He glared at Johnny. “What the hell do you want?”
“A net over Riley,” Johnny said.
“Riley?” The full-faced man removed his glasses. He looked from Johnny to Kratz and back again. “What about Riley?”
“He was just over at where I'm stayin',” Johnny said easily. “He gave me till noon to get out of town or else. I taped the whole conversation. I just mailed the tape to a friend of mine in New York. If he doesn't hear from me every twenty-four hours he mails the tape on to a Washington address we both know.”
Daddario's snapping black eyes slid off to Kratz. “Did you send him over there, Jigger?” he asked quietly.
“You know I never sent him no place you didn't say to send him,” the big man protested. “I never sent him there.”
Jim Daddario reached for his phone. “Police Headquarters,” he grunted. A hand tapped idly on a corner of his desk. “Riley,” he said. “Jack? Jim.” His voice gathered force. “What the hell did you think you were doing threatening this man Killain?” Veins swelled in his temples as he listened. This man really had a temper, Johnny decided. “Don't try to lie to me-he's standing right here in front of me! He taped your whole goddamn foolish conversation.” Scratchy sounds issued from the phone. “I'll do the damn thinking! You do what you're told! And the next time I won't just be telling you!” He banged up the receiver furiously.
“Too bad, Daddario,” Johnny needled him. “At least when you buy 'em they ought to stay bought.”
Jim Daddario never even looked at him. “Get over there before the blithering idiot has time to put a story together,” he said to Kratz. “I want to know why he did it. Shake him down to the holes in his socks.” Kratz glanced at Johnny. “I'll handle this,” Daddario said impatiently. “Get going.”
“Nice, tight little army you've got,” Johnny said admiringly when Kratz had gone. “Rudy and his friends pay the private taxes that subsidize it?”
“You've got a big, fat lip, Killain,” the realtor said coldly. “Button it while you can.”
“You sound like a big, brave boy. Are you forgettin' you sent your army off to the wars?”
“Killain, I've got a thousand things on my mind beside a two-bit slab of beef like you, but if you push me I could get around to you. As of now you're excused. Get out.”
“I only got half what I came for, hotshot. Where's Micheline Thompson?”
“I haven't the faintest notion.”
Johnny reached across the desk and took him firmly by the tie. “Jack your brains up, wise guy. It's time you learned a few manners.” Slowly and steadily he applied downward pressure on the tie until Daddario's head was forced down to the desk top. His face turned scarlet. His hand darted suddenly to a desk drawer.
Johnny dropped his grip on the tie and picked up the desk. Daddario screamed as the rising desk trapped his hand in the drawer. His chair went over backward and he hung by his hand from the desk for an instant before Johnny dropped it on him. Drawers and papers cascaded in all directions as Daddario lay winded, panting.
Johnny started around the upside-down desk after him. A gobbling noise from the phone on the floor distracted him. He picked up the receiver. “Police, police, police!” he could hear one of the women in the outer office babbling. He dropped the receiver.
He bent down beside the hard-breathing realtor and spoke slowly and distinctly. “The next time I ask you something, wise guy, have the answer handy.”
He walked lightly past the shattered door into the outer office. At sight of him, the woman at the phone shrieked and threw it away from her. Johnny waved at her. At the door he looked back. Jim Daddario's private office looked as if a tidal wave had rolled over it and Jim Daddario still lay amidst the debris.
Johnny touched off the kindling in the fireplace with a folded newspaper he used as a torch. Beside him, Jessamyn Burger watched as it alternately flared and dimmed until the birch logs began finally to crackle and sputter. Johnny sat back on his heels and looked up at her. “That appeal to your homemakin' instinct?”
“Don't make fun of me,” she said softly. She retreated to the nearer of the two chairs drawn up before the fire, but paused before she sat down. “Would you like a brandy to settle dinner?”
“If you have one, too.”
“I'm afraid I had too many cocktails. I feel-well, lightheaded.” She went to get his brandy and returned with a second glass with half as much in it. “I couldn't resist.” She handed him his glass as he sat in one of the chairs and with an outstretched leg he barred her from the other.
“One chair this size is big enough for two people,” he told her.
She exaggerated the lift of her brows. “I can see you're not the practical type. I'd crush my best dress.”
“Take it off.”
“Really, you're-”
“Take it off, Jessie.”
She smiled, a slow, helpless smile. “Then stay right where you are,” she warned him, and disappeared behind the bedroom door.
Johnny sat and watched the firelight's refractions from his brandy glass. He felt pleasantly relaxed. There was no sound from the bedroom. He sipped at his brandy. Jessamyn reappeared in the doorway and he set down his glass.
She had on a pale ivory negligee that nicely complemented her dark hair. Her pom-pomed mules had high
