of them had an umbrella and they stayed together under it the way women will who try to keep their hair dry or something. They went as far as the corner together, the other two got in a bus while she kept on walking.'
'Wasn't a pass required at the gate?'
He nodded deeply, a motion touched with sarcasm. 'Sure, there was a pass all right, each of the two had a pass and showed it. Maybe the guy thought he saw the third one. At least he said he thought so.'
'I suppose somebody was outside the gate too?'
'That's right. Two men, one on foot and one in a car. Neither had seen the Torn girl and were there to stop anyone making an unauthorized exit.'
I let out a short grunt.
Pat said, 'They thought it was authorized, Mike.'
I laughed again. 'That's what I mean. They thought. Those guys are supposed to think right or not at all. Those are the guys who had my ticket lifted. Those are the guys who want no interference. Nuts.'
'Anyway, she got away. That's it.'
'Okay, we'll leave it there. What attitude are the cops taking?' 'It's murder, so they're working it from that end.' 'And getting nowhere,' I added.
'So far,' Pat said belligerently. I grinned at him and the scowl that creased his forehead disappeared. 'Lay off. How do you plan to work it?'
'Where's Evello?'
'Right here in the city.'
'And the known Mafia connections?'
Pat looked thoughtful a moment. 'Other big cities, but their operational center is here too.' He bared his teeth in a tight grimace. His eyes went hard and nasty as he said, 'Which brings us to the end of our informative little discussion about the Mafia. We know who some of them are and how they operate, but that's as far as it goes.'
'Washington doesn't have anything?'
'Sure, but what good does it do. Nobody fingers the Mafia. There's that small but important little item known as evidence.'
'We'll get it,' I told him, '. . . one way or another. It's still a big organization. They need capital to operate.'
Pat stared at me like he would a kid. 'Sure, just like that. You know how they raise that capital? They squeeze it out of the little guy. It's an extra tax he has to pay. They put the bite on guys who are afraid to talk or who can't talk. They run an import business that drives the Narcotics Division nuts. They got their hand in every racket that exists with a political cover so heavy you can't bust through it with a sledge hammer.'
He didn't have to remind me. I knew how they operated. I said, 'Maybe, chum, maybe. Could be that nobody's really tried
hard enough yet.'
He grunted something under his breath, then, 'You still didn't
say how you were going to work it.'
I pushed myself out of the chair, wiping my hand across my
face. 'First Berga Torn. I want to find out more about her.' Pat reached down and picked the top sheet off the pile he had
dropped on the floor beside him. 'You might as well have this
then. It's as much as anyone has to start with.'
I folded it up and stuck it in my pocket without looking at it.
'You'll let me know if anything comes up?'
'I'll let you know.' I picked up my coat and started for the
door.
'And Mike...' 'Yeah?'
'This is a two-way deal, remember?' 'Yeah, I remember.'
Downstairs, I stood in front of the building a minute. I took the time to stick a Lucky in my mouth and even more time lighting it. I let the flare of the match bounce off my face for a good ten seconds, then dragged in deeply on the smoke and whipped it back into the night air. The guy in the doorway of the apartment across the street stirred and made a hesitant motion of having come out of the door and not knowing which way to walk. I turned east and he made up his mind. He turned east too.
Halfway down the block I crossed over to make it a little easier on him. Washington didn't discount shoe leather as expenses so there was no sense giving the boy a hard time. I went three more blocks closer to the subway station and pulled a few gimmicks that had him practically climbing up my back.
This time I had a good look at him and was going to say hello to add insult to injury when I caught the end of a gun muzzle in my ribs and knew he wasn't Washington at all.
He was young and goodlooking until he smiled, then the crooked march of short, stained teeth across his mouth made him an expensively dressed punk on a high-class job. There was no hop behind his pupils so he was a classy workman being paid by an employer who knew what the score was. The teeth smiled bigger and he started to tell me something when I ripped his coat open and the gun in the pocket wasn't pointing at me any more. He was half spun around fighting to get the rod loose as the side of my hand caught him across the neck and he sat down on the sidewalk with his feet out in front of him, plenty alive, plenty awake, but not even a little bit active.
I picked the Banker's Special out of his hand, broke it, dumped the shells into the gutter and tossed the rod back into his lap. His eyes were hurting. They were all watered up like he was ashamed of himself.
'Tell your boss to send a man out on the job the next time,' I said.
I walked on down the street and turned into the subway kiosk wondering what the deuce had happened to Washington. Little boy blue back on the sidewalk would have a good story to take home to papa this time. Most likely he wouldn't get his allowance. At least they'd know a pro was in the game for a change.
I shoved a dime in the turnstile, went through, pulled the sheet out of my pocket, glanced at it once and walked over to the downtown platform.
Chapter Six
Something happens to Brooklyn at night. It isn't a sister borough any more. She withdraws to herself and pulls the shades down, then begins a life that might seem foreign to an outsider. She's strange, exciting, tinted with bright lights, yet elusive somehow.
I got off the Brighton Line at De Kalb and went up to the street. A guy on the corner pointed the way to the address I wanted and I walked the few blocks to it.
What I was looking for was an old-fashioned brownstone, a hangover from a half-century past, that had the number painted on the door and looked at the street with dull, blank eyes. I went up the four sandstone steps, held a match to the mailboxes and found what I wanted.
The name CARVER and TORN were there, but somebody had drawn a pencil through the two of them and had written in BERNSTEIN underneath. All I could do was mutter a little under my breath and punch the end button on the line, the one labeled SUPER. I leaned on it until the door started clicking, then I opened it and went in.
He came to the door and I could almost see his face. Part of it stuck out behind the fleshy shoulder of a woman who towered all around him and glared at me as if I had crawled up out of a hole. Her hair was a gray mop gathered into tiny knots and clamped in place with metal curlers. She bulged through the bathrobe, trying to slow down her breathing enough so she could say something. Her hands were big and red, the knuckles showing as they bit into her hips.
Dames. The guy behind her looked scared to death. She said, 'What the hell do you want! You know what time it is? You think...'
'Shut up.' Her mouth stopped. I leaned against the door jamb. 'I'm looking for the super.'
'I'm the...'
'You're not anything to me, lady. Tell your boy to come out.' I thought her face would fall apart. 'Tell him,' I
