“Yeah?”
“You probably don’t even remember. You coulda hauled my ass in and I’da done a stretch, a real one — I was over eighteen. You gave me a one-time pass.”
I had no memory of it, but if he thought he owed me, fine. “Know something, Paddy?”
He swallowed, then jumped in. “We had a bad apple in our bunch. A squealer. Turned the cops on to us four different times. The guys wanted to bump him, but that would only pull more law down on us, so the rough guys in the club figured out a cute dodge. Bucky, he wanted out from his family and he suddenly had a load of dough to lay out, so if the Uptowners could fake a kill on him and get somebody else in his place, and like really mutilate him up bad, Bucky would put his ID on the body and two birds would be killed with one beer bottle.”
“How did Bucky know about your squealer?”
“Man, word gets around, you should remember that.”
I bobbed my head in agreement. “What happened?”
“This a clean game you’re playing, Captain?”
I squinted at him.
“That was a long way back,” he said. “But there’s no time limit on murder, is there?”
“No.”
“I wasn’t in on this play. I came in right after the hit and got details from another member. I don’t remember who, either.” Something tightened his face. “Captain, there’s such a thing as accomplice after the fact, and—”
“Consider this a civilian inquiry.”
“You swear it?”
“I swear it.”
“Okay,” he said and took a deep breath. “I don’t know who drove the car, but the deal was when Bucky came up the street the Uptowners would send a member out to identify him and bring him back to us. Our guy would walk on Bucky’s left so when the car made the move, Bucky would jump clear and the squealer would get mashed. Well, it worked. The driver went over the body four times and when he finished you couldn’t even tell it was human. Bucky took the guy’s ID, put his own in its place dropped his jacket or something down and took off.”
“No accident investigation?”
“Come on, Captain. Who cared a hoot about a street gang in those days? Just one more punk out of the way. Remember?”
“I remember, but you guys asked for that attitude.”
His eyes were steady, unblinking. “And that’s why and when I got out of that life, Captain.”
“What happened to Bucky?”
“Who knows? He was a downtowner anyway.”
Suddenly Paddy The Bull’s eyes squinted at me and I asked, “What?”
The old Blue Uptowner said very seriously, “Has he surfaced somewhere?”
“Why, he owe you money?”
“Oh, he paid his tab. He laid a grand on the club with an extra bill thrown in for five hundred. It was a crazy bill, the money itself I mean.”
“Crazy how?”
“Crazy weird, crazy odd. Looked real for sure, but was a lot bigger in size than a regular note. It was pinned to the wall in the club until some old guy offered us six hundred bucks for it and everybody had a great beer party.”
I grunted. “The government stopped printing those large bills back in the twenties, Patrick me boy.”
“No kidding!” Then he asked, “I wonder where he got it from.”
I said, “Beats me,” but a germ of an idea was infecting my brain. I told him so long and went down to the corner to flag down a cab.
When one came along I sat back and dropped another piece into the puzzle. Old Bessie was right. Bucky Mohler was alive. He had something going for him now that could make him the biggest frog in the pond.
And it all had started on the Street that was dying.
It’s nice being a retired cop.
It’s great to have a finely honed reputation too, so that when the desk boys see you go past they think, “He was a tough apple, that one.” They’re glad to let you in on their knowhow because even if it was a little off the base line, they were doing their duty to protect the citizenry like the men in blue did on the hard pavements.
Nothing much that was exciting ever happened in the development office. They okayed repairs and new building, the papers and inquiries handled between bored clerks. Then an old hotshot comes in, gets instant access to the head man’s office and the buzz starts going around.
John Peter Boyle, a grizzled character in an executive’s suit, shook hands with a toothy smile and waved me to a chair. “My phone started to ring the minute you came in, Captain.”
“Just call me Jack. I’m in civvies now.”
He gave me a grin that said he hadn’t always been behind a desk. “Come on, Captain — my pop was in World War Two, but afterward he couldn’t call Eisenhower ‘Ike’ to his face now, could he? So... Captain — what can I do for you?”
“Mr. Boyle, I need a permit to inspect a house that’s up for demolition.”
“Should I ask why?” When I shrugged, he said, “Is this personal?”
“I’m asking as a retired cop.”
He shrugged and his grin widened. “In that case, you got it. Want to give me the details?”
Before I got back to the Street, I made a short stop at my favorite locksmith’s shop on Third Avenue. It had been five years since we’d had any contact, but I didn’t have to spell out any details. The round-faced little old guy looked at my face after we shook hands and knew that this wasn’t a personal visit.
He said, “Okay, Jack, what’s going down this time? Terrorists? Murderers?”
I let him see my grin and said, “I need a key for a Waylord lock. Outside door, oval-shaped key latch, solid brass.”
“That’s a good standard unit. Nothing special. They used a lot of them on the old tenement buildings a long time ago. You any good at picking that thing?”
“Haven’t got the time. Besides, I’m out of practice.”
“No sweat, old friend.”
He went back to his tiny workshop, came back with two new keys and laid them in my palm.
I said, “How much?”
“Jack, I have another hundred of them. The jokers in those old tenements were always losing theirs, and a new key was cheaper than kicking a door down.”
I put the keys in my pocket and winked my thanks at him.
And now I was strictly legal, a permit to secure my entry, a working key to get inside without damaging the property, and a retired cop’s ID in my wallet. Absently, I patted my side where the holster... .45 used to hang. Nothing was there.
But the Glock was in my waistband.
Shadows were angling down the street now, big, long ones because nothing was there to break them up. Bessie’s building was there and her upstairs window was still open, but her elbow pillow was gone. A small corner of a curtain fluttered out, then blew back in again. It was the same curtain that had always been there.
I walked slowly, taking my time, then turned onto Bucky Mohler’s concrete walkway and into the shadow of the old structure. In those old days, when Big Zappo Padrone had built the place, it must have been a lulu. There were scars on the building that said a huge porch had once been there and for a grand space around the building there was openness. Hell, this one domicile could have been the only building on the block.
And, like the Street, it was dead.
Or was it?
I merged right in with the shadows and put the key in the lock. It opened easily. I turned the knob and pushed the door open. Nothing was in the way. My miniature flashlight was enough to lead me through the three floors of the building and illuminate dirt and dust that had collected on old-fashioned furniture and rotted rugs on the floor. It was hard to tell if this place had been empty for ten years or a hundred. Nobody had been here in the last five years of my time at the station house. Once, back there in the wild days of city crime, this must have been one hell of a command post. But no sign of that was left any longer.