I moved my beat up here a couple of blocks and you'd be surprised how much can go on just a pair of traffic lights away. Like another world.'
'Don't yak so much, Joe.'
'Mike ... when do I get the chance to? Like you're a captive audience.' Then he saw the impatience in my face and nodded. 'He came in from Miami about two months ago where he was working Hialeah. That was his thing, working the tracks where the cash money was and the crowds and the excitement. Only the security boys made him and he got the boot.'
'Who fed you that?'
'Banjie Peters. He hustled tout sheets. He even knew the guy from a few other tracks that kicked him out. So the only place he don't get the boot is Aqueduct and he comes up here for the season. He works it one day and blammo ... security spots him and gives him the heave. He was lucky because he didn't even have time to make his first touch. They find him with anything on him and it's curtains out there.'
'They have a name for him?'
'Sure, a dozen, and no two alike.' He gave me a funny little grin and fished around in his legless lap for something. 'I kind of figured you'd be around so I had Banjie con his buddies in security outa a picture they had. They mugged him at Santa Anita and sent copies around.'
He held out a two-by-two black and white photo of a lean, sallow-looking face with a mouth that was too small and eyes that seemed to sneer at the world. His hair had receded on the sides and acne scars marred the jawline. The picture cut him off at chest level, but under his coat he had on an off-shade vest with metal buttons that could have been red. His description on the back put him at age forty-six, five feet eleven tall and one hundred fifty-two pounds. Eight aliases were given, no two remotely alike, and no permanent address.
Now I knew what he looked like.
Little Joe said, 'He couldn't score at the track, that's why he started hustling around here. You remember Poxie?' While I nodded Joe went on. 'When he ain't pimping he keeps his hand in working other people's pockets. This boy sees him working Shubert Alley and beats the crap outa him. Like he laid out a claim and was protecting it. Over there's where he and Lippy used to meet up. You know, Mike, I don't think Lippy knew what the guy was doing.'
'He didn't,' I said.
'Maybe he found out, huh? Then this guy bumped him.'
'Not quite like that, pal. You know where he is now?'
'Nope, but I seen him last night. He come outa one of them Greek language movies on Eighth Avenue and hopped a cab going uptown. I woulda taken the cab number so you could check out his trip sheet, only I was on the wrong side of the street.'
'Good try, kid.'
'If you want, I'll try harder.'
I looked at him, wondering what he meant.
Little Joe grinned again and said, 'I saw Velda too. She was right behind him and grabbed the cab after his.'
The knot in my stomach held fast, not knowing whether to twist tighter or loosen. 'What time, Joe?'
'Last show was coming out. Just a little after two-thirty.'
And the knot loosened. She was still on her own then and Ballinger hadn't caught up with her. She had located our pickpocket and was running him down.
Little Joe was still looking at me. 'I saved the best until last, Mike,' he said. 'The name he really goes by is
Beaver. Like a nickname. He was in Len Parrott's saloon when Len heard two guys ask about him. This guy drops his drink fast and gets out. They were asking about a red vest too and the guy had one on.' A frown drew his eyebrows together. 'They was Woody Ballinger's boys, Mike.'
I said, 'Damn' softly.
'The bartender didn't tell them nothing, though.'
I let a five-spot fall into Little Joe's box. 'I appreciate it, buddy. You get anything else, call Pat Chambers. Remember him?'
'Captain Pat? Sure, how could I ever forget him? He shot the guy who blew my legs off with that shotgun fifteen years ago.'
If you can't find them, then let them find you. The word was out now in all the right places. It would travel fast and far and someplace a decision would have to be made. I was on a hunt for Sammy and Carl to throw a bullet through their guts and do the explaining afterward. They'd start to sweat because there was plenty of precedent to go by. I had put too many punks they knew under a gun for them to think I wouldn't do it and the only way to stop it would be to get me first. They were the new cool breed, smart, polished and deadly, so full of confidence that they had a tendency to forget that there were others who could play the game even better. Who was it that said,
I finished straightening up the wreckage in the office, pulled a beer out of the cooler and sat down to enjoy it. From the street I could hear the taxis hooting and thought about Velda. She was a pro too and it would take a pretty sharp article to top her. She knew the streets and she knew the people. She wasn't about to expose herself and blow the whole job no matter how far into it she had gotten. If the chips went down, she'd have that little rod in her hand, make herself a lousy target and take somebody down too. At least in New York you heard about shootings.
I switched on the transistor radio she had given me and dialed the news station. For ten minutes there was a political analysis of the new attitude the Russians had taken, seemingly agreeable to acting in harmony with U.S. policy along certain peace efforts, then the announcer got into sports. Halfway through there was a special bulletin rapped out in staccato voice telling the world that the hired killers of Tom-Tom Schneider had been located in a
cheap hotel in Buffalo, New York, and police officers and F.B.I, troops had surrounded the building and were engaged in a gunfight, but refraining from a capture attempt because the pair had taken two maids as hostages.
Okay, Pat, there's your news blast for tomorrow. Plenty of pictures and plenty of stories. It would cover all news media in every edition and the little find at the Ashokan Reservoir would stay a one-column squib that nobody would notice and you had one more day without a panic.
There was a four-car wreck on the West Side highway. A mental patient leaped from the roof of an East Side hospital, landed on a filled laundry cart and was unhurt. No other shootings, though, and the regular musical program resumed.
All I could do was wait awhile.
At six thirty in the morning I woke up when my feet fell off the desk. Daylight had crept into the office, lighting the eerie stillness of a building not yet awake. There was a distant whine of the elevator, probably the servicemen coming in, a sound you never heard at any other hour. I stood up, stretched to get the stiffness out of my shoulders and cursed when a little knife of pain shot across my side where the slug had scorched me. Two blocks away a nice guy I knew who used to be a doctor before they lifted his license for practicing abortions would take care of that for me. Maybe a tailor could fix my jacket. Right now the spare I kept in the office would do me.
At eight fifteen I picked up the duplicate photo cards Cabin's Film Service had made up for me, mug shots of the guy they called Beaver with his resume printed on the back. A half hour later I was having coffee with Pat and gave him all but three of them.
He called me two dirty names and stuck them in his pocket. 'And you said you wanted nothing to do with it,' he reminded me.
'Sorry about that,' I said.
'Yeah. Professional curiosity?'
'Personal interest.'
'You're still out of line. Regulations state you're supposed to represent a client.' He dunked a doughnut in his
