'Suppose Woody did run a big operation independently?'
'Then he'd be sticking his neck way out there just asking it to get chopped off. The dons would have their pizza punks out there with their shooters in his ears for even trying it. No dice, Mike.'
'Guys get big,' I said. 'They don't want somebody else's hand in their affairs. They think they're big enough to stand them off. They have their own shooters ready to protect the territory.'
'Unknown powers can do it. Not slobs who like to parade it in public.'
'Egos like to be recognized,' I said.
'That's how they get dead.'
'Just suppose,' I asked him.
Eddie blew on his coffee and tasted it. He had forgotten the sugar, made a face and stirred some in. 'He'd have to
do it in his head. No books, no evidence. All cash, personal contacts, and hard money payoffs.'
'Woody's a thinker, but no damn computer.'
'Then a minimum of notations, easy to hide, simple to destroy.'
'But it could be done?'
'Certainly, but ...' Eddie put his cup down and turned around to look at me, his eyes squinted half shut. 'Either you're trying to make me feel good by getting my mind off things or you got something. Which?'
'You'll never feel good, kid. I was just confirming something I thought of.'
'Damn, you're a bastard,' Eddie said with a quick grin.
'Why does everybody call me that?' I asked.
CHAPTER 7
Velda had left a recorded message at ten fifteen stating that she had located Little Joe, the no-legged beggar who pushed himself along on a skate-wheeled platform. Little Joe had seen Lippy and a tall, skinny guy together on several occasions. They were obviously friends, but Little Joe didn't buy the other guy at all. He figured him for a hustler, but didn't ask any questions. His own business was enough for him. He could probably recognize the guy again if he saw him, but the skimpy description was the best Little Joe could do. Velda had left him my numbers to call if he saw him again and if it turned up right Little Joe earned himself a quick hundred. Meanwhile, Velda was going to stay in the area and see what else she could pick up.
Tall and skinny. Probably a million guys like that in the city, but at least it was a start. Eliminate the squares, look for a hustler in a ten-block area during a critical time period when the theater crowds were going in and out and you could narrow it down to a handful. The trouble was, that handful would be the cagy ones. They wouldn't be that easy to spot. They had their moves plotted and a charted course of action if somebody made them. They could disappear into a hundred holes and nobody was going to smell them out for you. I put the phone back, turned my raincoat collar up and went outside and waited for a cab.
Pat's office wasn't the madhouse I thought it would be. All officers available for duty were out in the field and only a lone bored-looking reporter was on a telephone turning in a routine report. A dozen empty cardboard coffee cups stuffed with drowned cigarette butts littered the desk, holding down sheafs of paper.
I said, 'Hi, buddy,' and he turned around, his face seamed with fatigue lines, his eyes red-veined from lack of sleep. 'You look beat.'
'Yeah.'
I pulled a chair up, sat down and stretched my legs. 'Since when does an operation this size involve homicide?'
'Ever since that guy died in the subway.'
'Anything new?'
'Not a damn thing.'
'Then why don't you try sleeping in a bed for a change?'
'We're not all private citizens,' Pat growled.
'How's the general reaction so far?'
'We're managing.'
'Somebody's going to wonder about the Russians looking for a summit meeting and the bit going on in the U.N.'
'There's enough tension in the world to make it look plausible. You have four shooting fracases going on right now and three of those involved have nuclear capabilities if they decide to use them. There's reason enough for international concern. Washington can handle it if certain parties who know just a little too damn much can keep quiet.'
'Don't look at me, buddy. It's your problem.'
Pat gave me a lopsided grin. 'Oh no. Some of it's yours. Unless you're immune to certain deadly diseases.'
'They isolate it yet?'
'No.'
'Locate the agents that were planted here?'
'No.'
'You talk too much,' I said.
Pat leaned back and rubbed his eyes. 'There's nothing to talk about. For the first time the Reds are as bugged about it as we are. They know we have a retaliation policy and damn well know its potential. Nobody can afford to risk a C.B. war. They haven't been able to run down a single piece of written evidence on this business at all. If there ever was any, it's been deliberately destroyed by that previous regime. That bunch tried to keep a dead hand in office and they did a pretty good job. We have to work on rumor and speculation.'
'Did the technicians at Fort Derrick come up with anything?'
His eyes gave me an unrelenting stare.
'Come on, Pat. There's nothing really new about our chemical-biological warfare program being centered there.'
'What could they come up with?' he asked me softly.
'Like nuclear physics, problems and solutions seem to be arrived at simultaneously. When that agent was planted here that bacteriological program would have been developed to a certain point. Now it's twenty-some years later, so they should be able to guess at what he had as a destructive force.'
'Nice,' Pat said. 'You're thinking. They can make a few educated guesses, all right, but even back then, what was available was incredibly destructive. Luckily, they worked on antibiotics, vaccines and the like at the same time so they could probably avoid total contamination with a crash immunization program.'
I looked at him and grinned. 'Except that there isn't enough time to go into mass production of the stuff.'
Pat didn't answer me.
'That means only a preselected group would be given immunization and who will that group consist of ... the technicians who have it at hand, a power squad who can take it away from them, or selection by the democratic method of polls and votes?'
'You know what it means,' Pat said.
'Sure. Instant panic, revolution, everything gets smashed in the process and nobody gets a thing.'
'What would you do, Mike?'
I grinned at him again. 'Oh, round up a few hundred assorted styles of females, a couple of obstetricians, a few male friends to share the pleasure and to split the drinks, squirt up with antibiotics and move to a nice warm island someplace and start the world going again.'
'I never should have asked,' Pat said with a tired laugh. 'At least now I'll be able to get some sleep knowing the problem has been solved.' He yawned elaborately, then stifled it. 'Unless you got another one.'
'Just one. Did ballistics get anything on those shots in Lippy's apartment?'
Pat moved a coffee cup aside and tugged out a stained typewritten sheet of paper. 'They dug a .38 slug out of the floor. The ejected cartridge was a few feet away. The ring bands on the lead were well defined so it was either a new piece or an old gun with a fresh barrel. My guess would be a Colt automatic.'
