coffee and took a bite of half of it.
'Be happy, friend. I'm giving you no trouble, Fm paying for the snack and staying out of your way. You should be glad citizens take an active interest in affairs like this. Besides, you haven't got the time.'
'So why the photos?'
'You still have routine jobs going. Pass them along to the plainclothes boys. Maybe you got bigger things on your mind, but this is still an open murder.'
'For you it's not open.'
'I'm just throwing back the foul balls.'
'Mike,' he said, 'you're full of shit. Sometimes I wish I had never known you.'
'You worry too much, friend.'
'Maybe you should. The days are going by fast.'
I took a close look at his face. The lines were deeper now, his eyes a lined red, and when he spoke it was almost without moving his lips. Somehow he couldn't focus on me, seeming to look past me when he spoke. 'Our Soviet friends have come up with another piece of information. When we wouldn't let them out of the country they really began digging. That strain of bacteria the former regime packaged and sent here was more virulent than even they suspected. If it's loose there's no hope of containing it, none at all. The lads at Fort Detrick confirmed it and if we don't get a break pretty damn quick it's all over, Mike, all over.'
'That doesn't sound like police information.'
'Crane broke down when he got the news. I was there when he went hysterical and blew it.'
'How many others know this?' I asked him.
'You're the eleventh.' He finished the doughnut and sipped at his coffee. 'Kind of funny. We sit here like nothing's happening at all. We want a pickpocket in a red vest, I watch the teletype to see how they're doing in Buffalo with those contract hoods, everybody else is plugging through the daily grind and in a few days we'll all be part of the air pollution until nature figures a way out of it in a couple million years.'
'Man, you're a happy guy today.'
Pat put the cup down and finally got his eyes fixed on mine. 'Mike,' he said, 'I'm beginning to figure you out.'
'Oh?'
'Yeah. You're crazy. Something's missing in your head. Right now I could lay odds that all you're thinking about is a dame.'
'You'd lose,' I said. I picked up the tab and stood up. 'I'm thinking about two of them.'
Pat shook his head disgustedly again. 'Naked?'
'Naturally,' I said.
CHAPTER 9
Something had happened to the Broadway grapevine. Nobody had seen Velda and although a half-dozen of the regular crowd were able to spot the red-vested Beaver by his photograph, nobody had seen him either. Woody Bal-linger, Carl and Sammy were in the nothing pocket too and I was beginning to get those funny little looks like it was
Some people liked car races. You could see the big kill happen there too. Others took it where they could find it, and now they were beginning to get a blood smell and watched the field leaders to see who was going to crowd who in the turn and wind up in pieces along the walls of Manhattan. By noon the sunny day had turned overcast again, the smog reaching down with choking little fingers, and I had reached Lexington Avenue where I had another cup of coffee in a side-street deli just to get out of it.
The counterman used to work for Woody and he couldn't give me a lead at all. It was nearly my last straw until I remembered how close I was to that crazy pad in the new building just a few blocks away, and finished the coffee and picked up a pack of butts at the cashier's desk while I paid my bill. There was somebody else who knew the people I was looking for.
The doorman flipped a fingertip to his cap and said, 'Afternoon, sir.'
'Your partner still courting?'
'He'll never learn. Last night he got engaged. I do double shifts and don't get any sleep, but I'm sure making the bucks. Just wait until he starts buying furniture.'
'Miss Anders in?'
'Sure. Different girl, that. Something happened to her. Real bright-eyed now. I think maybe she dumped that
clown she was going with. Playboy, no good at all. Too much money. Last night she got in at ten, and alone. You want me to call up, officer?'
I grinned at him, wishing Pat could have been here. He would have turned inside out. To Pat I was always the other side of the fence, with my face always the prime type to get picked up in a general dragnet.
'Don't bother,' I said. I returned his casual wave and walked to the elevator.
Heidi Anders saw me through the peephole and snapped off the double locks on the door. It opened a scant three inches on the chain and that pert face with the tousled ash-blonde hair and full-lipped mouth was peering at me with a disguised smile and I said, 'Trick or treat?'
The door closed and I heard the chain come off. When it opened again her head was tilted in a funny smile, the upslanted eyes laughing a me. 'Trick,' she said. Then added, 'But if you come in, it'll be a treat.'
'I'll come in.'
She let the door open all the way and I walked inside. I was treated. Heidi Anders was standing there bare- ass naked, prettier than any centerfold picture in a girlie magazine and no matter how lovely those uniquely rounded breasts were, or how all that ash-blonde hair contrasted, all I could see was that crazy navel with the eyelashes painted around it like an oversexed Cyclops.
'I just got up,' she said.
'Don't you ever take your makeup off?'
'It's part of my personality,' she told me. 'Most men have an immediate reaction.' She closed and locked the door behind me. 'I wish you had.'
'I want to wink at it.'
'At least that's different.' She smiled and walked down the hall, not bothering to take my hat this time. That wild gait was still there, but naked it had a totally new sway. I let her get all the way into the living room before I moved. Then I went in slowly, watching all the corners just to be sure, glad to have been in enough games not to get wiped out at the first charge of the opposition.
She didn't know it, but my hand was hooked over my belt, the palm comfortable against the butt of the .45. Too many times naked women and death walked side by side.
Heidi had thrown back the draperies and stood there in the cold gray light that brought out the tan marks on the flesh, then turned around slowly to face me. 'Do I look different, Mike?'
The navel still watched me. Crazy eye. Blind, but crazy and watching. The lashes were extra long.
'Different,' I said.
'You did it. You yelled at me. Mike ... you were pretty rough.'
'A broad like you shouldn't get hooked on H. There's too much going for you.' I picked a cigarette out of my deck and lit it up. 'Sorry about yelling at you.'
'It wasn't that.' She picked up something filmy from the chair and drew it through her hands. 'I saw your face when I turned you off. I was lying there all ready and waiting and I turned you off. That never happened to me before. I wanted to get laid and I was right there waiting for you and I turned you off. You yelled. I felt like ... you know what I felt like?'
I nodded. 'No retractions, kid.'
'Good. We did well, the doctor and I.'
'How about Woody Ballinger's goons?'
For a second I thought I had played it wrong, then she kinked her lips in a tiny smile and her eyes lit up again. 'I asked around,' she said. 'You were right, you know.'
