“Now that you mention it.”
“Any explanation?”
I shrugged, picked up a butt and lit it. “I told a few people about that last episode. Maybe one of them felt like having some fun.”
“It’s going to cost them if they keep it up.”
Tobano didn’t see the look on my face as I walked past to hold the door open for them. “You bet your ass it is,” I said.
Lee couldn’t hold his act any longer. It dropped as they went out and he sagged to the couch with a stifled groan and lay there shielding his eyes from the sunlight. His hands were shaking and a tic was playing around the comer of his mouth.
I went out to the kitchen, brewed up a pot of coffee and brought him a cup. “Drink it, you’ll feel better.”
He pushed himself to a sitting position and took the cup in his trembling fingers and sipped at it until it was gone. I took the cup away and lit him a cigarette. “Feel like talking?”
His eyes rolled toward mine in a face pasty white. “Dog ... what the hell are you into?”
“Sorry, kid.”
“They ... tried to knock me off.”
“I know.”
“But I didn’t even ...”
“Just describe them.”
His tongue tried to wet his parched lips and he nodded, his hand rubbing the bruise on the side of his head. “There were two of them. About your size. Those guns made them a lot bigger. Damn it, Dog ...”
“Come on, Lee.”
“Sure, come on. You know what it’s like to think you’re going to drown in a couple of minutes? You ...”
“I have a good idea.”
Lee squinted and propped his head in his hands. “They were in their forties, one wore a black suit, the other a sport coat and slacks. White shirts ... patterned dark ties.”
“Any definite characteristics?”
After a moment’s thought Lee said, “Nothing ... special, unless you want to call them kind of hard looking.” He looked up at me then, his eyes still scared. “Dog, look, those guys weren’t kidding around! They sat here all night without saying a damn thing, then all of a sudden one got up and coldcocked me. The next thing I knew I was tied up in the tub and they were turning the water on.”
“They must have said something.”
“Yeah, in the beginning. They wanted you. I didn’t know where the hell you were. You didn’t tell me you were going to stay out all night.”
“How about their speech? What did they sound like?”
“You mean... like a dialect?
“That’s right.”
Lee gave it a thought for a moment, frowning. “They spoke... well, pretty damn good. Like too good, maybe.”
“What do you mean?”
“Sort of ... like they studied the language. The one ... he seemed to think first, then speak. The other had a funny inflection like... you remember that RAF pilot they called Big Benny?”
“Yeah.”
“Like him, that kind.”
“Benny was from Brussels,” I said. “He went to England straight from college four years before the war started.”
“Well, he didn’t say much except to ask about you and he sounded like Big Benny when he did.”
“Did they say what they wanted me for?”
“No, but one was going to search the place until the other one told him you wouldn’t be that stupid. They were going to wait until you got here, make you talk and then kill you. They had a briefcase with them that had all kinds of stuff in it. Tools, bottles of stuff... scared the shit out of me. I guess they knew I wasn’t lying or they would have tried something on me.”
“They knew, all right. I just wonder why they didn’t wait for me.”
“One of them kept looking at his watch the last two hours. He was getting pretty fidgety.”
“They could have figured I smelled the trap and would come back with reinforcements.”
“But why those cops?”
“Another way to nail me down, except their timing was bad. They kept a watch on the door until I did show, then called the cops thinking I’d be grabbed in an apartment with a dead man ... or trying to move a body.”
“Trying to... geez, Dog ...”
“Forget it. Nothing happened. I’m going to clear out of here and ...”
“The hell you are,” he interrupted. “I saw those guys and I can identify them. You’re not letting me be a straggler on this raid. Man, I’m chicken. I don’t go for this routine at all.”
“Okay, okay, you may be right.”
I got up and got another cigarette. When I turned around he was staring at me like I was a stranger. “You know who they were, don’t you?”
“No.”
“Then you know why they were here.”
“I got an idea.”
“But you can’t tell me.”
“No,” I said.
“You’re wild,” Lee told me, then he grunted “I guess you know I really did shit my pants.”
“I found that out the hard way.”
“You ever do that?”
“Twice,” I told him.
“Dog ...”
“Yeah?”
“They were wearing brown shoes.”
I snuffed the butt out and waited.
“In New York you don’t wear brown shoes with a black suit or dark slacks. Like it’s one of the gauche things out-of-towners do.”
“Or foreigners?”
“Uh-huh. All the time.”
“What else?”
“Everything they had on was brand-new. I saw the folds in their shirts from the packages.”
“You notice the guns?”
“How could I miss them. One was a big bore, maybe a
.38. Either a Colt or an S. and W. The other one was a .22 on a heavy frame.”
“Nickel-plated?” I asked him quietly.
“Yeah. How’d you know?”
Below the penthouse level of the fabulous Chateau 300, New York City lay sprawled out like a gigantic Christmas tree, the lower branches sweeping into Queens, Brooklyn and the Bronx, then stairstepped up to the giant towers of Manhattan.
Cable Howard Productions had taken over the entire restaurant to celebrate its merger with Walt Gentry, announcing the forthcoming filming of Fruits of Labor, a current best seller of nineteenth- century sex. Lee had whipped up a guest list that included everybody who was anybody at all; football greats, movie stars, Wall Street financiers and a scattering of war heroes in uniform of all the services.
The press was all over the place, popping flashbulbs, rolling TV cameras and taking notes, living up to their reputations at the punch bowl and the three huge bars. A pair of name orchestras spelled each other at playing soft
