“Handy like this?” Saltz was fast for an elephant. With one sweeping motion he reached over the desk, hit me on the chin. I flew backwards, found myself scrambling on the floor. Working my mouth to clear my head, I tasted blood on my lips. I stood up, eyes on Saltz's muscular neck.
“That make you feel like a
He came in swinging. Ducking under the heavy arm, I jumped high on his heavy body, wrapped my legs around his hips, digging my ankles under the back of his knees. He chopped by my kidneys as I locked my hands, pressing the edges against his Adam's apple.
We stood like that, his fists punching at me wildly, in an embrace of death. His blows stopped as his face turned blue and he fought for air. I increased the pressure on the back of his knees and he slowly fell backwards. We landed on the floor with a loud thud. His eyes began to pop so I eased up on his throat, told him, “Don't ever push me around, you big ape! Get this through your damn thick head—I can kill you now, and if you ever try any strong-arm crap on me again... I
“I don't know if you think I'm the killer or not, but I imagine you checked with Pete at the yacht basin, know I didn't have a dinghy, couldn't have gotten ashore unless I swam. That's not the strongest alibi in the world, but it will do for now. And no matter what you think, I'm more anxious to find the killer than you are... I got a personal reason; I wasn't in love with Anita but I was fond of her. Now let's get up and stop this rough-and-tumble crap, get to work.”
I jerked my legs out from under him, stood up. He sat up, rubbed his throat, then got to his feet. I kept my eyes on his hands. Somebody opened the door behind me but I didn't turn to look. A man asked, “Everything okay, lieutenant? Heard a crash in here.”
“Beat it,” Saltz said hoarsely. The door shut and Saltz opened his collar, felt of his neck as he went back to his desk. He sat down and looked me up and down, as though he still didn't believe I'd thrown him. “I'll be damned... so you're a judo man.”
“Black Belt, First Degree,” I said, sitting down opposite him.
“I had a little of it in Police College, that Jap stuff really any good?”
“Jiujitsu... the 'soft or gentle art,'“ I said. “Really isn't Japanese, the Chinese had it about two thousand years ago, and maybe it started in India before that. It was hot stuff then, but now...”
“It still works!” Saltz said, stroking his throat.
“It depends upon surprise, knowledge of the vulnerable spots of the body. Today, with boxing and wrestling on TV, kids learning how to handle themselves in school, judo isn't so much. And it's frustrating as hell.”
“Why?”
I grinned. “You can never finish a good hold—without killing the other guy. But it works—for a shrimp like myself. Forget the lecture and let's get back to Anita. Could this have been a sex job? She was a hot kid, might have got mixed up with...”
Saltz shook his head. “No marks of attack, underwear wasn't touched. Doc says she was a virgin.”
“Then why the awful beating? Think it's the work of a loon?”
“We're considering that. Most cases of torture—they're trying to make the victim talk. You on any big cases, anything important?”
“Hell, I never had an important case in my life.”
He asked me about the other people I had in the agency and I told him about the pugs and he said, “I remember this Martinez, a good boy with no heart. Ran out on the champ. How come you got all these punchies working for you?”
“They're not punchy. Did some boxing myself... I was a good little man. You know the old adage—a good little man can't beat a good big man. Outside the ring, whenever I had to handle myself, always seemed to run into good big men. Why I turned to judo. The point is I got to know a lot of pugs around the gym and...”
“And they work cheap.”
“I give them a fair shake. I give them guard work because there isn't much else an ex-pug is suited for.”
We talked some more about Anita and it astonished me how little I actually knew about her. By the time it was starting to get light outside, Saltz told me I could leave. “But don't try anything fancy, like leaving town. Until I get a better one, you're number one on my suspect parade.”
2
It was a little after 6 a.m. and I had three cups of coffee and felt better. But the more I thought, the less things added up. The rock didn't make any more sense than when Will gave me the case. The fact that it was missing didn't mean a thing—wouldn't be hard to lose a sliver like that. But if it wasn't the rock...? I ran into an absolute blank wall. Yet Anita must have known she was in danger or she wouldn't have taken the gun. Every time I thought of the gun, a wave of bitter shame and rage shook me.
I had another coffee and the counterman said cheerfully, “No feeling worse than when you're really hung over.” He favored me with a yellow-toothed grin. “Bet you tied a good one on. Nice lip you got there, too.”
I finished the coffee. A bar across the street was opening and I went in, downed two quick ryes. As I came out, my buddy, the counterman, was standing in the doorway of his shop, sadly shaking his head at me.
When I got to the office, the door was open and the place looked like a hurricane had struck it. There's only a plain lock on the door so they didn't have any trouble with that. The safe was scratched and marked but they hadn't opened it. But every drawer had been turned inside out and the floor was ankle deep in papers and files. About twenty bucks of new stationery was shot to hell. I got Bobo on the phone and out of bed, told him to come right down. Then I called Artie Jenks who was going fine till he got a concussion banging his head on an unpadded canvas, told him to take over Bobo's construction job.
I found my rubber pad among the paper, sat down and hit the sides of my hands against it and tried to think. Ransacking my office meant Anita hadn't been killed by any jerk she'd picked up, but what were they looking for? It
