around.'
'He's still a man.'
My mouth felt dry. 'He's a cagey guy.'
Her elbow nudged her side meaningly. 'I still have that, Mike.' You have to do things you don't want to do sometimes. You
hate yourself for it but you still have to do it. I nodded, said,
'Where's his place?'
'Not Brooklyn. He has a special little apartment under the name of Tony Todd on Forty-seventh between Eighth and Ninth Avenues.' She pulled a note pad out, jotted down the number with the phone to go with it and handed it over. 'Just in case, Mike.'
I looked at it, memorized every detail there, then let the flame of my lighter wipe it out of existence. My beautiful, sleek animal was smiling at me, her eyes full of excitement and when you looked hard you could see the same thing there that you could see in mine. She stood up, winked and said, 'Good hunting, Mike.'
Then she was gone.
I gave her five minutes. I followed the shadows further uptown along the Drive to the building Billy Mist owned.
For the first time I was glad he was such a big man. He was so damn big he didn't have to stake anybody out around his place. He could relax in the luxury of security, knowing that just one word could bring in an army if anybody tried to take the first step across the line.
It was another one of those things that came easy. You go in like you belonged there. You get on the elevator and nobody notices. You get off and go down the hall, then stick the key in the lock and the door opens. You get treated to the best that money can buy even if the taste is crummy.
There were eight rooms in all. They were spotlessly clean and treated with all the care a well-paid maid could give them. I took forty-five minutes going through seven of them without finding one thing worth looking at until I came to the eighth.
It was a little room off the living room. At one time it must have been intended for a storeroom, but now it had a TV set, a tilt-back chair with an ottoman in place facing it, a desk and a bookcase loaded with pulps. Out of eight rooms here was the place where Billy Mist spent his solo time.
The desk was locked, but it didn't take more than a minute to get it open. Right in the middle section was a dimestore scrapbook fat with clippings and photos and he was in all of them. My greasy little friend was one hell of an egotist from the looks of the thumbmarks on the pages.
Another ten minutes went by going through the book and then I came to Berga's picture. There was no caption. It was just a rotogravure cutout and Billy was grinning at the camera. Berga was supposed to be background but she outsmiled Billy. Two pages later she came up again only this time she was with Carl Evello and it was Billy who was in the background talking to somebody hidden by Carl's back. I found two more like that, first with Billy, then with Carl, and topping it all was a close-up glossy of Berga at her best with 'love to my Handsome Man' penned in white across the bottom.
Nothing else unless you wanted to count the medicine bottles in the pigeonholes. It looked like the cabinet in the bathroom. Billy must have had a pretty nervous stomach.
I closed the desk, locked it and wiped it clean. I went back to the living room, checked my watch and knew the time was getting close. I picked up the phone and dialed Pat's home number. Nobody answered so I called headquarters and that's where he was. It was a tired, disgusted Pat that said hello.
'Busy, Pat?'
'Yeah, up to my ears. Where have you been? I've been calling between your office and your house all night.'
'If I told you you'd never believe it. What's up?'
'Plenty. Sugar Smallhouse talked.'
I could feel the chills crawl up my legs until the hairs on the backs of my hands stood straight out.
'Give, Pat. What's the score?'
He lowered his voice deliberately and didn't sound like himself at all. 'Sugar was on the deal when Berga got bumped. Charlie Max was called in on the job but didn't make it.'
'Come on, come on. Who did he finger?'
'He didn't. The other faces were all new to him.'
'Damn it,' I exploded, 'can't you get something out of him?'
'Not any more, pal. Nobody can. They were taking the two downtown to the D.A.'s and somebody chopped them.'
'What're you talking about?'
'Sugar and Charlie are dead. One federal man and one city cop are shot up pretty bad. They were sprayed by a tommy gun from the back seat of a passing car.'
'Capone stuff. Hell, this isn't prohibition. For Pete's sake. Pat, how big are these guys? How far can they go?'
'Pretty far, it looks like. Sugar gave us one hot lead to a person with a Miami residence. He's big, too.'
I could taste something sour in my mouth. 'Yeah,' I said, 'so now he'll be asked polite questions and whatever answers he gives will satisfy them. I'd like to talk to the guy. Just him and me and a leather-covered sap. I'd love to hear his answers.'
'It doesn't work that way, Mike.'
'For me it does. Any trace of the car?'
'Sure, we found it.' He sounded very tired. 'A stolen job and the gun was still in it. We traced it to a group heisted from an armory in Illinois. No prints. Nothing. The lab is working on other things.'
'Great. A year from now we'll get the report. I'd like to do it my way.'
'That's why I was calling you.'
'Now what.'
'That screwball play of yours with Sugar and Max. The feds are pretty sore about it.'
'You know what to tell them,' I said.
'I did. They don't want to waste time pulling you out of jams.'
'Why, those apple heads! Who are they supposed to be kidding? They must have had a tail on me all night to run me down in that joint and they sure waited until it was finished before they came in to get their suits dirty.'
'Mike...'
'Nuts to them, brother. They can stick their heads...'
'Shut, up for a minute, will you!' Pat's voice was a low growl. 'You didn't have a tail... those two hoods did. They lost the boys and didn't get picked up again until they reached Long
John's.'
'So what?'
'So they needed a charge to drag them in on. The boys caught the tail, ditched their rods someplace and when one of our plainclothesmen braced them they were clean. They had a second tail and didn't know it, but they didn't take any chances and pulled some pretty fancy footwork just in case. If they could have been pulled in on a Sullivan rap we would have squeezed something out of them. You didn't leave them in condition to talk.'
'Tell ?em thanks,' I grunted. 'I don't like to be gunned for. I'll try not to break up their next play.'
'Yeah,' Pat said sourly.
'Anything on Carver yet?' I asked him.
'Not a thing. We have two freshly killed blondes, more or less. One's been in the river at least three days and the other was shot by an irate lover just tonight. They interest you?'
'Quit being funny.' I looked at my watch. Time was getting too damn short. I said, 'I'll buzz you if anything turns up, otherwise I'll see you in the morning.'
'Okay. Where are you now?'
'In the apartment of a guy named Billy Mist and he's due in any second.'
His breath made a sharp hissing sound over the phone as I hung up. I had almost timed it too close. The elevator marker was climbing toward the floor when I reached it and just in case I stepped around the corner of the
