'C'mon Charlie. This watch has a real neat function on it. Better than scuba diving…' '
I stepped out of my pants and took off my undershirt. She was grabbing at me. Tacky broad.
'Ow!'
'C'mon Charlie… get in.'
'Hey, the ears wiggle too, with every tick… Hey!'
'Better than race-car driving too-'
I looked at the watch again before I climbed into the sack. The little guy on the face smiled back at me.
'Hiya Mickey,' I said, 'long time no see.'
CHAPTER FIVE
Joe came in and sat down on the foot of our bed. He was wearing nothing but his drawers.
'Good morning everybody,' he said.
'jeez, Joe, can't you get dressed before you come in here?'
'Why? It's only you and Sis, She's seen me like this a lot, right, Mare?'
She laughed a sleepy laugh. Sometimes, I thought, these Italians get too cozy for comfort. I got up and walked over to the bureau.
'Well look who's talking, for Chrissake! At least I've got pants on!' said Joe.
'It's different. I'm married to her,' I said.
'Okay, you two. I think I've seen enough beef for this morning,' said Mary wearily. 'Especially considering it's not prime cut. Now I'm not going to get out of bed bare-assed in front of both of you, so get out.'
'This any better, guy?' I held out my wrist to Joe and he laughed. I replaced the Mickey Mouse watch with the gold Omega, threw on my clothes, and went down to make coffee. Mary called after me from the bedroom. Were we going to church? No, Joe answered from the guest room, we had to go into Cambridge. We had a quick breakfast of coffee and croissants, then Joe and I left for the city in his car. Mary retired to her workshop. At a stoplight on Route 2 Joe didn't budge when the light turned green. Cars behind us honked.
'What's wrong?'
Joe looked as if he'd seen a ghost. He turned to me and said in a half-whisper: 'His pouch.'
'Whose pouch? Hey, move or pull over, guy, these polite Massachusetts drivers are getting impatient.'
We moved ahead and Joe took the slow lane, staring ahead with his brows furrowed.
'Here we are with a dead courier, and the one thing we overlook is his carrying pouch. Hell, I never saw Johnny without it. It was an old newsboy's pouch. Gray canvas with a shoulder strap. It had the words Lowell Sun on it in dark-blue letters. Now he could have left it at his office. But as I remember, he usually took it home with him. Do you remember seeing it up in Lowell?'
'No. You know it wasn't there. I think the killers took it.'
'Hmmm. That could be the motive. Gee, I remember Johnny telling me all about the pouch. Had it since he was a kid delivering papers up in Lowell. There weren't that many blacks in Lowell then. He'd have to go into white neighborhoods to make his route. He took a lot of abuse. As a result he learned to fight. But he told me it was the pouch that most often saved him. It was his badge of legitimacy, his reason for being in the strange neighborhood, It was his Saint Christopher's medal. I think that's why he kept it all these years.'
He turned and looked at me as a car passed us at high speed.
'Wherever it is, we gotta find that pouch. Could be the key.'
We took Memorial Drive to Mass. Ave., cut around the M.I.T. campus, and pulled up at a tiny cinder-block building, painted white, just off Kendall Square. It was surrounded by a high Cyclone fence. The windows were small and covered with grating.
Soon we heard a faint rumbling and popping sound growing louder and louder, a sound like a miniature artillery war advancing at great speed. An old red Honda motorcycle skirted the building and came to a stop in its own special parking space in a tiny niche in the Cyclone fence. It was a vintage bike, a 350 twin with loud pipes. As the driver revved the throttle prior to shutting it off, it growled and backfired.
The driver's passenger was a curiosity. It was a huge dog, wearing goggles, which sat on a specially made platform on the back of the double seat. The dog was big and blocky, and fawn-colored with brindle stripes on his big Hanks. When the engine stopped he lowered his wide head and pawed at the goggles with the side of his front foot. The driver turned, pulled the goggles down so they dangled from around the animal's neck, pulled the bike up on its stand, and took off his helmet.
Sam Bowman, like his dead partner, was a black man. Also like the late john Robinson, he was a man who kept himself in shape. The man who snapped the heavy chain lead to the studded collar on the bull mastiff was whipcord lean and had wide shoulders. The shoulders sloped down like a barn's gambrel roof from a wide and sinewy neck. He walked toward us with vigor and purpose. The giant dog stayed right at his left leg. When I he stopped to shake hands with us the dog sat down and looked blankly ahead. We all went to the front door, and Sam took a key chain from his pocket and unlocked three big deadbolts. Then he inserted a small key into a complex- looking box with a meter in it.
'Whole place is bugged,' he said softly. 'Anybody fool with this door, the police know about it. I just shut it off.'
We walked inside. It was a single room with a sink and a coffee maker at one end, and an enclosed john. There were two desks. Sam sat down behind the bigger one, a hard rock-maple rolltop that had three large spindles on top which were stacked up with impaled receipts and slips. A big safe stood against the far wall.
The floor was spotless linoleum, waxed. Sam unsnapped the heavy lead and the big dog ambled over to a raised platform covered with old carpet, where he sank to his belly and regarded us with a blank stare. He had a black muzzle, like all mastiffs, and a big steam-shovel mouth. His wide chest and heavy shoulders were hunched with wads of muscle, even in repose. Big blood vessels showed under the short, velvety coat. A whole lot of dog. Sam nodded in the direction of the beast.
'That's Popeye. Nobody fool with Popeye. He all business.'
'How you doing, Sam?' asked Joe.
'I been better. I been a whole lot better, Joe,' he said.
'I know. We're real sorry. All of us are really sorry.'
The man frowned and bunched his big shoulders.
'Somebody gonna pay,' he said.
'Sam, as we told you over the phone, we'd like to look at Friday's log sheet to see exactly where Johnny went and when. Also, if we could find out what he was carrying… if it's known-'
Sam nodded and shuffled through a stack of papers on the big desk.
'Now the murder could be unconnected to any of this; it could l be the result of something awhile back.'
'I know. No way of tellin' is there? I think maybe it was something way back, Joe. Nothin' he did Friday was that important or valuable, except that fancy cup for the Harvard Museum, the Fogg.'
'And the museum piece was valuable?' asked Joe.
'Oh yeah. About half a million bucks or somewheres. But it was delivered safe to the Fogg. I know because Johnny called me hisself after he delivered it. He called at-'
Bowman checked the log sheet.
'- lessee, ten twenty-seven. He just called to check in, see if there were any more jobs that come in over the phone, you know. There was nothing more, so that's the last I heard from Johnny. Ever.'
'Didn't you see him after the last job?'
'Naw. On Fridays we had a deal. If no more jobs came in over the wire after three, I split. Johnny would stop in after his last job with the log sheet… usually. That is, if the last job was pretty nearby. Otherwise he'd take the sheet home with him in the pouch and I wouldn't see him till Monday at seven-thirty. That's when we'd meet here every day, for coffee and to talk. About the only time we had to visit, except lunchtime, if he was nearby enough to stop in.'
'Did he leave his pouch here, Sam?' asked Joe.
'No. He took the pouch home with him every night.'
