'Yeah, yeah. Look, let's get moving.'
'What are you doing with him?'
I made what was supposed to be a laugh. 'I'm minding him for his father.'
She didn't know whether to believe me or not. 'Mike... this Florida business can wait if there's something important.'
The speaker system was calling off that the Miami Limited was loading. For a second I debated whether or not I should tell her and decided not to. She was a hell of a woman but a woman just the same and thought too goddamn much of my skin to want to see me wrapped up in some kind of a crazy hate again. She'd been through that before. She'd be everything I ever wanted if she'd just quit making sure I stayed alive. So I said, 'Come on, you got five minutes.'
I put her on the train downstairs and made a kiss at her through the window. When she smiled with that lovely wide mouth and blew a kiss back at me I wanted to tell her to get off and forget going after a punk in Miami who had a hatful of stolen ice, but the train jerked and slipped away. I waved once more and went back upstairs and caught another cab home.
Up in the apartment I undressed the kid, stuffed the ragged overalls in the garbage pail and made him a sack on the couch. I backed up a couple of chairs to hold him in and picked him up. He didn't weigh very much. He was one of those little bundles that were probably scattered all over the city right then with nobody caring much about them. His pale hair was still limp and damp, yet still curly around the edges.
For a minute his head lolled on my shoulder, then his eyes came open. He said something in a tiny voice and I shook my head. 'No, kid, I'm not your daddy. Maybe I'll do until we find you another one, though. But at least you've seen the last of old clothes and barrooms for a while.'
I laid him on the couch and pulled a cover up over him. Somebody sure as hell was going to pay for this.
Chapter Two
The sun was there in the morning. It was high above the apartments beaming in through the windows. My watch read a few minutes after ten and I unpiled out of bed in a hurry. The phone let loose with a startling jangle at the same time something smashed to the floor in the living room and I let out a string of curses you could have heard on the street.
If I yelled it got stuck in my throat because the kid was standing barefooted in the wreckage of a china-base table lamp reaching up for my rod on the edge of the end table. Even before I got to him he dragged it out of the clip by the trigger guard and was bringing his other hand up to it.
I must have scared the hell out of him the way I whisked him off the floor and disentangled his mitt from the gun. The safety was off and he had clamped down on the trigger while I was thanking the guy who invented the butt safety on the .45.
So with a gun in one hand and a yelling kid in the other I nudged the phone off the hook to stop the goddamn ringing and yelled hello loud enough so the yowls wouldn't drown me out.
Pat said, 'Got trouble, Mike?' Then he laughed.
It wasn't funny. I told him to talk or hang up so I could get myself straightened out.
He laughed again, louder this time. 'Look, get down as soon as you can, Mike. We have your little deal lined up for you.'
'The kid's father?'
'Yeah, it was his father. Come on down and I'll tell you about it.
'An hour. Give me an hour. Want me to bring the kid along?'
'Well... to tell the truth I forgot all about him. Tell you what, park him somewhere until we can notify the proper agency, will you?'
'Sure, just like that I'll dump the kid. What's the matter with you? Oh, forget it, I'll figure something out.'
I slammed the phone back and sat down with the kid on my knee. He kept reaching for the gun until I chucked it across the room in a chair. On second thought I called the doorman downstairs and told him to send up an errand boy. The kid got there about five minutes later and I told him to light out for the avenue and pick up something a year-old kid could wear and groceries he could handle.
The kid took the ten spot with a grin. 'Leave it to me, mister. Me, I got more brudders than you got fingers. I know whatta get.'
He did, too. For ten bucks you don't get much, but it was a change of clothes and between us we got the boy fed. I gave the kid five bucks and got dressed myself. On the floor downstairs was an elderly retired nurse who agreed to take the kid days as long as I kept him nights and for the service it would only cost me one arm and part of a leg.
When she took the kid over I patted his fanny while he tried to dig out one of my eyes with his thumb. 'For a client,' I said, 'you're knocking the hell out of my bank roll.' I looked at the nurse, but she had already started brushing his hair back and adjusting his coveralls. 'Take good care of him, will you?'
'Don't you worry a bit now. As a matter of fact, I'm glad to have something to do with my time.' The kid yelled and reached his hand inside my coat and when I pulled away he yelled again, this time with tears. 'Do you have something he wants?' she asked me.
'Er... no. We were... er, playing a game with my coat before. Guess he remembered.' I said so-long and got out. She'd eat me out if she knew the kid wanted the rod for a toy.
Pat was at ease in his office with his feet up on the desk, comparing blown-up photos of prints in the light that filtered in the windows. When I came in he tossed them aside and waved me into a chair.
'It didn't take us long to get a line on what happened last night.'
I sat back with a fresh cigarette in my fingers and waited. Pat slid a report sheet out of a stack and held it in front of him.
'The guy's name was William Decker,' he said. 'He was an ex-con who had been released four years ago after serving a term for breaking and entering. Before his arrest he had worked for a safe and lock company in a responsible position, then, probably because of his trade, was introduced to the wrong company. He quit his job and
