turned on the radio and settled down to the long and boring drive.
All the way down the Thruway, with traffic very light the whole way (mostly trucks). Then, when they were near New York, they switched over to the New Jersey Turnpike, which meant two more toll-people Freddie left stunned and Peg left happy. Down the turnpike through New Jersey to the spur over to the Lincoln Tunnel, and two more toll-people, one of whom (at the tunnel) was a woman, so Peg's wiles wouldn't do any good. On the other hand, this woman was a toll-taker at the New Jersey side of the Lincoln Tunnel, so she hadn't seen anything odd at all about the guy driving that big tractor-trailer; in fact, if you asked her, he looked more normal than most.
Freddie had told Jersey Josh he'd probably phone between three and four in the morning, and it was in fact about a quarter past three when, reaching Ninth Avenue in Manhattan, Freddie pulled the big rig to a stop at the curb in a no-parking zone, and Peg pulled in behind him. Getting out of the van, stretching, stiff and sore, she walked forward to the cab, looked up, sighed, and said, 'Freddie, put your head on.'
'Oh. Sorry. I remembered for the tollbooths.'
She watched Dick Tracy reappear. 'You mean, you drove all the way down with your head off?'
'It gets hot, Peg.'
'I'm surprised we didn't leave a hundred accidents in our wake.'
'You can't see up in here at night,' Dick told her. 'It worked out, didn't it?'
'Sure. I'll call Josh now, right?'
'Yeah.' The Playtex glove pointed. 'I parked where there's a phone booth. If it works.'
It wasn't a booth, it was just a phone on a stick, but it did work. Peg dialed the number, and after about fifteen rings it was finally answered. 'S?'
'Hi, Josh,' Peg said, with absolutely false friendliness. 'It's Peg, calling for Freddie.'
'O.' He didn't sound happy.
'We're here with the stuff. We'll meet where you said, right?'
'Meet Freddie.'
'The both of us, Josh.'
'S,' he said, sounding bitter, and hung up.
A long long time ago there was an actual slaughterhouse in Manhattan, way down below Greenwich Village, near the Hudson River. In the nineteenth century, they had cattle drives down Fifth Avenue, bringing the cows to the slaughterhouse, but then they built a railroad line that was partly in a cut between Tenth and Eleventh Avenues, which is still used by trains from the north coming down to Penn Station, in the West Thirties. Going down from there, the old train line was elevated, at second-floor level, and ran all the way downtown, the trains that carried the doomed cows trundling south and south, as buildings were constructed all around the track, and neighborhoods grew up, until here and there the elevated train line was actually inside buildings along its route.
Then it all came to an end. The slaughterhouse shut down and there was less and less manufacturing of other kinds in lower Manhattan, and fewer and fewer cargo ships from Europe that unloaded there, so there was no longer a need for a railroad line down through Manhattan south of Penn Station. But that old elevated line had been constructed of iron, and built strong enough to carry many tons of train and beef, and it was not an easy thing to tear that big old monster down, so for the most part it was left standing. Here and there, when new construction was under way, it made sense to remove a part of the old line, but most of it is still there. It's there today, just above your head, black old thick iron crossing the street, out of that old building and into that old building, an artifact from an earlier and more powerful time.
Down in the West Village, a block-square brick factory building had long ago risen around the railroad line, incorporating the track inside the building. After World War II, when that factory was converted to apartments, the old loading docks and other access to the tracks were all sealed up with concrete block and finished on the converted side with Sheetrock walls. The unlit unfinished ground-floor area beneath the track was used as parking space by a few neighborhood businesses, a plumber and a locksmith and one or two others, but over the years that cubbyhole down there became a hangout for the kind of people who have only good things to say about anonymous sex. There were some robberies down in there, and some assaults, and then two fatal stabbings within a month, at which point the city sued the corporation that owned the building, which was the first time the corporation had had to confront the fact that the filthy grungy hellhole beneath the old railroad track was actually a part of the structure they owned. So they concrete-blocked one end of it, and put a high chain-link gate at the other end, with razor wire on top, and only the supers had the key to the gate, which meant that, within six months, half a dozen of the worst felons in the neighborhood had keys to the gate.
One of these was an associate of Jersey Josh Kuskiosko. He it was to whom Jersey Josh would deliver the truck and its goods, for a nice profit on the evening's work, it having been agreed that Freddie Noon would be paid forty thousand dollars if the truck and goods were as advertised, whereas Jersey Josh's associate would then pay Jersey Josh one hundred thousand. That is, once the truck, and its contents, were safely locked away inside that gate, inside that apartment building, under those old railroad tracks.
Freddie had not had that much experience maneuvering a monster this large around streets as small and narrow and bumpy as those in the West Village. Every time he made a turn, at least one tire climbed the curb. That he didn't hit any parked cars was a miracle. Peg, trailing along behind him, had to keep closing her eyes and waiting for the crash that never came.
But then Freddie saw it, out ahead; the old railroad line, the black iron terrace of the Nibelungs, a black bridge spanning the street from one nineteenth-century brick factory to another, with the murky expanse of New York Bay in the background, beneath a clouded sky.
That creature hulking in the deeper darkness under the span was more than likely Jersey Josh; the truck's headlights somehow seemed to avoid shining directly on him. The two guys with him maybe actually were Nibelungs: brutish, nasty, and short.
Freddie wasn't used to thinking in terms of the height of the vehicle he was driving, so it wasn't until later, after he was out of the truck, that he realized that, when he'd driven under the railroad bridge, he'd had less than three inches' clearance. Which, of course, was as good as a mile.
In any event, Freddie drove the truck under the bridge and beyond, stopping with just the very rear of the trailer still underneath. Then, as he climbed down from the cab, feeling very stiff and sore after all that time in the same unnatural position, Peg drove the van into the narrow lane left between the truck and the line of parked cars at the curb, and stopped next to Jersey Josh, who was standing between cars, frowning at the big trailer as though he'd expected something smaller, maybe pocket-size.
'Hi, Josh,' Peg said.
Josh looked at her and said nothing. The two henchmen — born henchmen, those two — stood back on the sidewalk, near the chain-link gate, and said nothing. Freddie approached, in his Dick Tracy head and Playtex gloves.
Perky as she could be, Peg said, 'You got the money, Josh?'
'Check,' Josh said.
Peg shook her head. 'We don't take checks, Josh,' she said.
He pointed a blunt and filthy finger at the trailer. 'Check
Freddie had reached them by now. 'Josh,' he said, 'you know it's all there. Everything you asked for. In fact, even two extra washing machines. I'm throwing them in for free.'
Josh turned his head to look toward Freddie's voice, and then recoiled at what he saw, bouncing his butt off the hood of the car behind him. 'What U?' he cried.
Freddie waved a Playtexed hand at the henchmen. 'You trust these guys because they're your pals,' he said, which was patent nonsense. 'But do I know them? No. So I don't want those guys to know who I am.'
'I know who you are,' one of the henchmen said. 'You're Dick Tracy.'
The other henchman said, 'How come a cop?'
'If a real cop stops me,' Freddie explained, 'he'll think I'm on his side.'
'Gloves,' Josh pointed out, pointing at them.
'Fingerprints.'
Josh shook his head, bewildered as usual by the antics of the human race.
'Money,' Peg said, extending a graceful arm out of the van.
Josh ignored her. Pointing his right hand at the truck and his left hand at Freddie, he said, 'Back in.' Then pointed both hands at the chain-link fence, which one of the henchmen was now unlocking.
