Jack Fawcett wondered how many his front yard could hold.
He flopped down in his office chair, and for the first time his eyes caught the note lying on top of his desk. He recognized the spidery handwriting of the dick on the graveyard shift, and he held the note close, reading slowly.
It said, simply: 'Jack — Call Pinky.'
Okay.
'Pinky' was one of several street snitches who served Jack Fawcett on a semiregular basis. As every working detective knew, the majority of cases could never be solved by the old Sherlock Holmes routine. You needed a good, reliable pigeon to finger your suspect and drop the case in your lap when the going got tough. Then a good cop could keep up his record, and the snitch could be happy with whatever crumbs were passed down the chain of command.
This particular snitch was a junkie, one of those burned-out zeroes who used to be called bums and dope fiends but how had been rechristened 'street people' sometime during the late sixties. Fawcett had busted him once, long ago, deciding on a hunch to let him slide in return for a larger bust, his supplier. Pinky had come through with a righteous bust, and it had only cost Fawcett a tiny piece of the dealer's stash.
A good deal, yeah, although the details had made a younger Jack Fawcett slightly nervous in retrospect. Since the first time, he had dealt with his snitches strictly on a cash-and-carry basis.
Lately, Pinky had put Fawcett on to a couple of pretty good busts: a mugger who liked to go all the way with his marks, and a pair of Oklahoma cowboys with a penchant for stick-ups and a no-witness policy. Most recently, Fawcett's snitch had been keeping his ear to the street, seeking any rumbles on the possible whereabouts of a young man named Courtney Gilman.
Fawcett dialed a number from memory, and a familiar voice answered on the fourth ring.
'Yeah?'
The snitch sounded sleepy or drugged. Probably some of each at that hour of the morning.
'I got your message, Pink. What's shakin'?'
Fawcett could hear his informer coming alive and alert at the other end of the line.
'Oh, hey, right, man. I knew you'd want to hear it right away. I tried your home number, but...'
Fawcett interrupted him brusquely.
'Hear what, Pinky?'
'Huh? Oh, yeah, man, I'm pretty sure I got your pigeon.'
Jack Fawcett tensed, craning forward in his chair and gripping the telephone receiver in a stranglehold. His knuckles whitened.
'I'm listening,' he snapped.
Pinky gave him the address of a cheap fly-by-night hotel not far from Riverside Park, and the number of the room where his suspect was last registered. Fawcett noted the address and number on a scrap of paper and pocketed it.
'If this pays off, I owe you one, Pinky,' he said.
The drugged voice cooed back at him.
'Okay, man. This is the real skinny, no shit. I wouldn't shine you on.'
'You'd better not.'
The guy's voice took on a new tinge, that of fear.
'No sweat, man, it's straight.'
'Okay.'
Fawcett hung up and hurried downstairs to his cruiser. The drive to the fleabag hotel took him twenty-five minutes, and he cursed every red and amber traffic light on the way.
The detective parked in a red zone next to a fire hydrant and went inside, unbuttoning his jacket on the way to make his bolstered .38 more readily accessible. Inside the dump, a sallow-faced desk clerk laid his body- builder magazine aside and leaned across the registration desk on scrawny arms.
Fawcett knew at once that the guy had made him as a cop.
'What can I do for you, officer?'
The sneer was barely concealed in his voice. Just well enough to avoid the certainty of loosened teeth.
Fawcett scowled, marking the bum down as a smart-ass.
'Who've you got in number twenty-six?' he demanded.
The desk clerk spread his hands.
'I ain't the nosy type. Anyway, I just came on at six.'
'Let's check the register, shall we?'
The clerk feigned shock at the suggestion.
'Ain't that an invasion of privacy or somethin'?' he asked, wide-eyed.
Jack Fawcett flashed a disarming smile, then reached quickly over the desk to snare a handful of the guy's fishnet shirt, half dragging him across until their faces almost touched. The detective's smile was gone, and his free hand held a stubby blackjack, lightly stroking the thick leather across one of the desk clerk's pallid cheeks.
'I didn't quite hear you, scumbag.'
The guy was shaking, suddenly anxious to please.
'The register, sure, right away,' he gasped, sucking air like a fish out of water.
Fawcett shoved him roughly backward, and the guy took a second to recover his balance, then produced a battered ledger from beneath the counter. He thumbed through several pages, paused, and read aloud.
'Tha— that'll be a male single, man. Gave his name to the night clerk as Joseph Smith.'
It was Fawcett's turn to sneer. 'How original.'
The guy considered a reply, but thought better of it. He shrugged.
'He in?' Fawcett asked.
Another shrug.
'No idea, man. Probably, this early, but who knows?'
'You got phones in the rooms?'
The clerk shook his head jerkily.
'Naw, just a pay job on the second and fourth floors. Your man's on the second.'
Fawcett aimed a warning finger at the guy's face, pistollike.
'Let's make sure that phone doesn't ring, eh?'
As he stowed the blackjack in a pocket, he let his jacket flare open to reveal the holstered revolver at his waist.
Jack Fawcett took the dirty steps two at a time, bypassing the ancient elevator. Upstairs, a murky hallway carried the pervasive odors of age and accumulated filth.
He paced off the hallway until he stood before the door to room twenty-six. Gingerly he tried the knob and, of course, found it locked.
Damn.
It had been a long shot, anyway.
Fawcett drew his .38 and thumbed the hammer back. He took a short step backward, then hit the door with a flying kick just beside the lock. There was a sound of splintering wood as the ancient door exploded inward.
Fawcett charged into a small, half-darkened room. Greasy curtains admitted dappled light, producing surrealistic nightmare shadows. Directly across the room, a slender figure was coming suddenly awake, thrashing around in tangled bed-sheets.
Jack Fawcett rushed to the bed and with one hand shoved the boy flat on his back, leveling his pistol at the upturned face. Familiar young-old eyes stared up at him with a mixture of fear and hatred. They were wild, animal eyes.
For an instant, the detective was overwhelmed by the temptation to squeeze the trigger of his .38 special and be done with it forever. His finger was tensing into the pull, his eyes narrowing, when he came to himself and shook the moment aside.
His voice was bitter, savage.
