envelope. 'Glad to see you traveling light.'
'Didn't you expect me to?'
His mouth crooked up at the corner. 'I figured you'd know better than not to. Just don't blame me for the deal, that's all.' 'You're not too sorry about it, are you?'
'As a matter of fact, no.' His fingers tapped the envelope, then his eyes came up to mine. 'It puts you on the spot as far as business is concerned, but I don't imagine you'll starve.'
'I don't imagine I will either,' I grinned back at him. 'How long am I supposed to be in solitary for?'
He didn't like the grin at all. He got those wrinkles around his eyes that showed when something was getting under his hide and took a long drag on the drink to muffle what he knew I saw. 'When they're ready to lift it they'll lift it and not before.'
'They won't have it that soft,' I told him.
'No?'
I flicked a butt into my mouth and lit it. 'Tomorrow you can remind ?em I'm an incorporated business, a taxpayer and a boy with connections. My lawyer has a judge probably getting up a show cause right now and until they settle the case in court they aren't pulling any bill-of-attainder stuff on me.'
'You got a mouthful of words on that one, Mike.'
'Uh-huh. And you know what I'm talking about. Nobody, not even a federal agency is going to pull my tail and not get chewed a little bit.'
His hands got too tight around the glass. 'Mike... this isn't just murder.'
'I know.'
'How much?'
'No more than before. I've been thinking around it though.'
'Any conclusions?'
'One.' I looked at him, hard. 'Mafia.'
Nothing changed in his face. 'So?'
'I can be useful if you'd quit booting me around.' I took a drag on the smoke and let it curl out into the light. 'I don't have to pull my record out. You know it as well as I do. Maybe I have shot up a few guys, but the public doesn't seem to miss them any. If your buddies think I'm stupid enough to go busting in on something over my head without knowing what I'm doing then it's time they took a refresher course. They haven't got one guy in Washington that's smarter than I am... not one guy. If they had they'd be making more moolah than I am and don't fool yourself thinking they're in there for love of the job. It's about the limit they can do.'
'You sure think a lot of yourself.'
'I have to, friend. Nobody else does. Besides, I'm still around when a lot of others have taken their last car ride.'
Pat finished off the glass and swirled the last few drops around the bottom. 'Mike,' he said, 'if I had my way I'd have you and ten thousand more in on this thing. That's about how many we'd need to fight it. As it is, I'm a city cop and I take orders. What do you want from me?'
'You say it, Pat.'
He laughed this time. It was like the old days when neither one of us gave a damn about anything and if we had to hate it was the same thing. 'Okay, you want me for your third arm. You're going to dive into this thing no matter who says what and as long as you are we'd might as well use your talents instead of tripping over them.'
The grin was real. It was six years ago and not now any longer. The light was back in his eyes again and we were a team riding over anything that stood in our way. 'Now I'll tell you something,
Mike,' he said, 'I don't like the way the gold-badge boys do business either. I don't like political meddling in crime and I'm sick of the stuff that's been going on for so long. Everybody is afraid to move and it's about time something jolted them. For so damn long I've been listening to people say that this racket is over our heads that I almost began to believe it myself. Okay, I'll lay my job on the line. Let's give it a spin and see what happens. Tell me what you want and I'll feed it to you. Just don't hash up the play... at least not for a while yet. If something good comes of it I'll have a talking point and maybe I can keep my job.'
'I can always use a partner.'
'Thanks. Now let's hear your angle.'
'Information. Detailed.'
He didn't have to go far for it. The stuff was right there in his lap. He pulled it all out of the envelope and thumbed the sheets apart. The light behind his head made the sheets translucent enough so the lines of type stood out and there weren't very many lines.
'Known criminals with Mafia connections,' he drawled. 'Case histories of Mafia efficiency and police negligence. Twenty pages of arrests with hardly enough convictions to bother about. Twenty pages of murder, theft, dope pushing, and assorted felonies and all we're working with are the bottom rungs of the ladder. We can name some of the big ones but don't fool yourself and think they are the top joes. The boys up high don't have names we know about.'
'Is Carl Evello there?'
Pat looked at the sheets again and threw them on the floor in disgust. 'Evello isn't anywhere. He's got one of those investigatable incomes but it looks like he'll be able to talk his way out of it.'
'Berga Torn?'
'Now we're back to murder. One of many.' 'We don't think alike there, Pat.'
'No?'
'Berga was special. She was so special they put a crew of boys on her who knew their business. They don't do that for everybody. Why did the committee want her?'
I could see him hesitate a moment, shrug and make up his mind. 'There wasn't much to the Torn dame. She was a goodlooking head with a respectable mind but engaged in a mucky racket, if you get what I mean.'
'I know.'
'There was a rumor that Evello was keeping her for a while.
It was during the time he was raking in a pile. The same rumor had he gave her the boot and the committee figured she'd be mad enough to spill what she knew about him.'
'Evello wouldn't be that dumb,' I said.
'When it comes to dames, guys can be awfully dumb,' he grinned at me knowingly.
'Finish it.'
'The feds approached her. She was scared stiff, but she indicated that there was something she could give out, but she wanted time to collect her information and protection after she let it out.'
'Great. I snuffed the butt out and leaned back in the chair. 'I can see Washington assigning her a permanent bodyguard.'
'She was going to appear before the committee masked.'
'No good. Evello could still spot her from the info she handed them.'
Pat confirmed the thought with a nod. 'In the meantime,' he went on, 'she got the jitters. Twice she got away from the men assigned to cover her. Before the month was out she was practically hysterical and went to a doctor. He had her committed to a sanitarium and she was supposed to stay there for three weeks. The investigation was held up, there were agents assigned to guard the sanitarium, she got away and was killed.'
'Just like that.'
'Just like that only you were there when it happened.'
'Nice of me.'
'That's what those Washington boys thought.'
'Coincidence is out,' I said.
'Naturally.' His mouth twitched again. 'They don't know that you're the guy things happen to. Some people are accident prone. You're coincidence prone.'
'I've thought of it that way,' I told him. 'Now what about the details of her escape?'
He shrugged and shook his head slightly. 'Utter simplicity. The kind of thing you can't beat. Precautions were taken for every inconceivable thing and she does the conceivable. She picked up a raincoat and shoes from the nurses' quarters and walked out the main entrance with two female attendants. It was raining at the time and one
