The waitress brought two drafts and left. Quirk and I were looking at each other. 'Could be a leak inside,' Quirk said. 'Of course it may just be something we don't know anything about. A jealous girlfriend, a mob deal that hasn't surfaced.'
I nodded. 'But,' I said, 'if you assume that, it gives you nothing to think about and nowhere to go.'
'That's right,' Quirk said. 'So maybe somebody knew that Mickey was going to fall, and figured he'd talk out of turn.'
I nodded. 'So they got him to meet them alone in the parking garage and killed him.'
'It had to be someone who had reason to meet him alone, and someone he wasn't afraid of.'
'And someone who would use a twenty-two automatic,' I said.
Quirk nodded. He was looking at the half empty shot glass in front of him. He put a forefinger into the whiskey and took it out and put it into his mouth and sucked on it absently.
'A broad,' he said.
'Fills the criteria,' I said.
'Say it is the supplier,' Quirk said. 'Is she part of the deal or do they hire someone?'
'Even a woman,' I said. 'Unless he knew her or something, Mickey wouldn't go without a couple of sluggos, even if it was a woman.' I finished my whiskey and drank some beer. 'Do we call her a hit person?' I said.
'A gunette,' Quirk said.
'So we figure that a woman Mickey knows gets him to meet her in the Quincy Market parking garage. Or to meet her somewhere else and drive there. . . . '
'Meet her and drive there,' Quirk said. 'If it's full, she goes someplace else.'
'Right,' I said, 'so he meets her someplace. They go to the garage. He parks and she blasts him.'
Quirk nodded.
'Then she gets out of the car, walks over to the stairs, and down and out and . . .' I shrugged.
'Yeah,' Quirk said, and shrugged a replica of my shrug. 'And there we are. You got anything to add? What made you so interested?'
I told him what Tommy Banks had said about Sherry Spellman and Bullard Winston. 'That's not much,' Quirk said.
'I know, but Mickey was all there was. It was the only thing that didn't make sense. The only event that didn't fit into the explanation.'
Quirk nodded. 'Yeah, I know. You don't have any handle on the kid and Winston, so you start at the other end and see if it leads backwards to them.'
'Back door,' I said.
'You think this Spellman kid could shoot Mickey Paultz to death?'
'No,' I said.
'But you could be wrong,' Quirk said.
'I surely could,' I said. 'I'm getting used to it. But the kid?' I shook my head. ''Course I would have said she'd never spend the night with Winston either.'
'Svengali?' Quirk said.
'Christ, I don't know.'
'Maybe he used her to get Mickey.'
'He wouldn't need to,' I said. 'He and Mickey were in cahoots.'
'But Mickey knew you had Winston's confession,' Quirk said. 'Winston was hiding from him. If Winston set up a meeting, Mickey would have brought troops.'
'What if Winston said no troops, as a condition. And Mickey thought, okay, I'll meet him and do it myself, only Winston beat him to it,' I said. 'Mickey have a piece?'
Quirk shook his head. I said, 'Okay, maybe a variation on that.'
'So where's the girl come in?' Quirk said. 'Maybe she doesn't.'
Quirk finished his whiskey. 'You got a handful of broken parts,' he said. 'Nothing fits.'
'But I have a nice personality,' I said.
Quirk snorted. 'What I'd do,' he said, 'if I were you, is I'd go talk with Broz, or at least Vinnie Morris. Mickey's supplier needs an outlet now that Mickey's dead, and Joe was all set up for it anyway.'
I nodded.
'I'd do it myself,' Quirk said. 'But they hate talking business with me.'
I nodded again. 'I been thinking about the back-door approach.'
Quirk raised his eyebrows slightly.
'What if I had everything backward,' I said. 'What if Mickey wasn't running Winston. What if Winston was running Mickey?'
