“So now you got a new ID. You get a driver’s license. You get a passport. You get a job. You’re Baby Smith, now age thirty. You can do it and do it and do it, man. You can set up three, four IDs, switch back and forth. What it is, you’re gone, okay?
“So now I got to find Speed who is thirty-seven and could be anyplace and be anybody so what do I do? I check out his pedigree and he’s from this little town in Jersey called Collingswood across the river from Philly. I figure, what the hell, we got to start someplace. The biggest little town near there is Camden. I do the cemeteries. I write down every dead kid I come across who would be thirty-five to forty if he’s still kickin’. I end up with thirty-two names outa maybe half a dozen cemeteries. So I pull some strings with some people I know in Trenton and I make a run on driver’s licenses. I’m lookin’ for a match-up to one of the names from the cemetery, somebody in his late thirties who just applied for a driver’s license. I draw
“Then I start dealin’ with Speed himself. He likes big city action. He likes ladies. He likes to play the numbers and the ponies. And. . . a big hit, he’s got diabetes. He needs a fix every now and again.”
“Insulin.”
“That’s the ticket. I figure, maybe he went across the river, maybe he’s hangin’ out in Philly. So I do the same thing with driver’s licenses in Pennsylvania and whadda ya know, I get lucky. I come up with three guys, three addresses, and one of the addresses is a phony. Now I figure Speed is a guy name of George Bernhart with diabetes livin’ someplace in Philly. I do the hospitals. My story is, this guy Bernhart, I never met him before, he comes by my place with a friend and he leaves his fixins. I’m afraid he needs the stuff. There’s twelve hospitals in the Philly area. I get to number nine, bingo. again. Now I got a George Bernhart, age thirty-eight, a diabetes freak livin’ at such- and-such in Philly. I stake the place, sure enough, here comes old Speedy down the street packin’ groceries. I make a phone call. Ten days, the job’s old news, I’m back in Manhattan spend- in’ the felt. See what I mean?”
“I get your point. Sometimes it’s the little things that count.”
“Yeah, right. Some oddball piece of information you pick up is what dumps them. If you ever get on to this bird, find out everything you can about him.
“You make your own luck.”
“I suppose there’s somethin’ to that.”
“What happened to old Speedy?”
“I didn’t ask. See, it’s not my thing. I’m a tracker, I don’t do hits. I don’t even pack heat, that’s what muscle’s all about. Now I’m in industry. I done Lucky Lootch a favor once. Wasn’t for him I’d be sittin’ in the pen someplace. Or maybe dead.”
“What kind of favor?” Keegan asked.
“I’m sittin’ in the holding pen down at the Tombs waiting for my bondsman to show up. I’m maybe twenty at the time, a small-time booster, that’s all. Anyways I’m sittin’ there and a couple of city dicks walk by and I hear one f them mention the name of a gambling house uptown they’re about to knock over. It’s a place I know is one of Lucky’s. So I make a little noise about my bond man not being there and the desk man lets me out to make another call and I ring up a guy I know knows Lucky and I tell him what’s about to happen and to get the word upstairs real fast. When the cops got there, the place was dark. Not a soul on the premises. Next thing I know my charges are dismissed and Mr. Lootch offers me a spot. I had this knack for sniffing out people didn’t wanna be sniffed out and he kind of cut me loose on my own. I never missed yet.”
“Mr. C. was right.”
“Bet’cher ass. I think I’ll have that steak. Medium well, a potato maybe and a bottle a ketchup.”
“My steaks are all prime beef, you don’t need to douse them with ketchup.”
“I put ketchup on everything. I put ketchup on my Wheaties.”
“Tiny, a T-bone medium well and a potato for Mr. Tangier. Bring the ketchup bottle.”
“Got it,” Tiny answered.
“So where do I start?” asked Keegan.
“Me? I’d start with the screw-up. See, you’re lookin’ for something federal around the middle of ‘34, right. Something that happened and maybe the feds are lookin’ for somebody related to that thing, whatever that thing is.’,
“Like what?”
“Hell, I don’t know. Maybe hot cars, that’s federal. Kidnapping. Smuggling. Bank robbery. Maybe somebody movin’ ladies around, state to state . .
“He wouldn’t be involved in anything like that.”
“Good thinkin’, Frankie. Not if he’s a sleeper like you say, waitin’ for somethin’ to happen, his angle would be to become a needle in the haystack. So, what I’m sayin’, somethin’ happened that maybe he wasn’t directly involved in. Somethin’ would make this John Doe turn rabbit. What could that be, a guy who’s missin’ but the feds wanna talk to him? An eyeball to something maybe? He knew somebody somethin’ happened to maybe?”
“And he couldn’t afford the scrutiny. What I mean, they’d maybe turn up his cover.”
“Now you’re cookin’. Look, how many cases that happened during those three, four months were the feds involved in? Already you narrowed things down a lot.”
“Where would you go if you were this guy?”
“Get lost out in the sticks someplace. Out in the farmland, someplace out past Chicago. Just melt in.”
“How about the South?”
“People’re too nosy down there.”
“Would he know all this?”
“You’d know that better than me. Anyways, that’s the way you do it, pal, hit and miss. Play the logic. Put
