“The name's Killain,” John told him. “I'm supposed to look at pictures in your file.”
“Pictures we've got,” the man behind the desk agreed. “What classification? Breaking and entering? Armed robbery? Safe cracking? Using the mails to defraud? Shoplifting? Bank robbery? Arson? Pickpocketing? The confidence game?” He ticked them off rapidly on his fingers. “If the offense was sexual, that's a different department.”
“Assault,” Johnny informed him. “A piece of pipe.”
A pencil poised over a notebook. “Time and location of assault? Investigating officer?”
“This mornin', in back of the Cortez Apartments. Cuneo investigated it.”
The pencil pointed back down the corridor through which Johnny had just come. “Gilligan's your man. Second door back that way.” His hand was groping for the phone as Johnny turned away from the desk.
Behind the second door Johnny found a room cluttered with small desks, large filing cabinets and a cheerful, blue-eyed extrovert in a pin-stripe suit. “Sit down, sit down,” the extrovert invited hospitably, eying Johnny and pointing to the largest desk. “I'm Gilligan.” He attacked the files energetically, dumped a big double handful of file cards on the desk before Johnny and returned to the cabinets for more. “The desk said you wanted the heavy characters.” He looked over at Johnny fleetingly. “You must have a hard head if you're still walking around after tying into a piece of pipe.”
“I got just the back of his hand when he flew. A friend of mine got the load.” Johnny looked dubiously at the pile of cards and lifted off the top one. He studied the picture in the upper left corner and the neatly typed information beneath — name, known aliases, last address, arrests, convictions, known associates and technique. “How the hell do they stay outside when you've got them under the gun like this?” he asked in surprise.
“Not all of them are out,” the bustling Gilligan informed him, returning with another stack of cards. “Once they're in there, they stay in until the undertaker seals up the casket.” He pulled up a chair opposite Johnny, put his feet up on the next desk and slid down onto the final eighth of his spine. “If you've any questions, fire away.”
Johnny turned cards silently. For the first few he glanced through the typewritten information on each one, but after a dozen or so he turned cards and just looked at faces. A man would be hard put to imagine this many lowering countenances in the city, he reflected, with a single common denominator-menace.
He looked up suddenly from one card to find the shrewd blue eyes across the desk steadily upon him; while appearing to be in a soporific trance, Gilligan had not missed an expression upon Johnny's face during the card-turning. Johnny grinned at him and flipped a card into his lap. “Thought you said you retired 'em when the undertaker got them. Jigger Whelan's not around any more.”
“That right?” Gilligan squinted at the card. “Whelan. I don't remember. What happened?”
“He lost a right-of-way argument with a hit-and-run artist a month or so ago. Jigger was on foot.”
Gilligan nodded and made a pencil notation on the card. “It takes us a little longer to catch up with that kind of exit. We don't expect it of our clients.” He smiled faintly, and Johnny returned to the diminishing stack.
A door at the side of the room opened, and Detective James Rogers entered. He looked tired, and his suit was in need of pressing. He nodded to Gilligan and addressed Johnny. “I heard you were here. Step across the hall before you leave and see the man.”
“He wants his shoes shined, maybe?” Johnny inquired.
“Don't go giving me a harder time than I'm having where I just came from,” the sandy-haired detective warned him. “I could always lose my temper.”
“Maybe you don't lose it in the right places,” Johnny suggested. “Sympathy's in the dictionary. Right next-”
“I know what it's right next to,” Detective Rogers replied wearily. “Just walk across the hall like a good little boy when you're finished here.” The hazel eyes considered Johnny bale-fully. “Remind me to talk to you sometime, too, about using my name to get a private eye off your back, will you?”
“You'd be surprised the influence you have, Jimmy.”
“Over some people, maybe.” The slender man's tone was ironic. “We'll be expecting you.”
Gilligan looked at Johnny curiously when Detective Rogers had departed. “I wouldn't think there was much of a future butting heads with Rogers,” he said mildly.
“He discounts the source,” Johnny replied briefly, and resumed turning over cards. When he finally reached the bottom of the stack, he stretched lengthily and looked up to find the blue eyes questioning him. He shook his head negatively. “He's not in there.”
Gilligan looked disappointed. “You sure you'd know the man?”
“That man I'd know,” Johnny answered softly.
Gilligan's glance at him was sharp, but he picked up the cards without comment. “They're probably waiting for you,” he said from the file. “You'd better get on over there.”
“Isn't it funny that everyone's in a hurry but me?” Johnny remarked, but rose reluctantly from his chair and moved to the door. After the day he'd had he didn't particularly look forward to locking horns with Joe Dameron. In Johnny's present razor-edged near-depletion, he knew his own temper well enough to know that the infighting could get out of hand quickly.
He knocked on the door across the hall and, when he heard nothing, knocked again. He tried the door when there was still no sound from inside. It was locked, so Johnny turned and walked back to the squad rooms where a plump detective with round eyes known on the Broadway perimeter as Owly sat by the phones.
“I was supposed to see Dameron,” Johnny said to him.
“They just went out, him and Rogers,” Owly replied.
“I can just barely stand missing him,” Johnny said with relief. “Just barely. See you later. He knows where to find me.”
On the street he looked up at the leaden skies. It was blusteringly cold, and it looked like more snow. It suited his mood. He set off toward the hotel.
Johnny gave a dum didididada dum dum knock upon the door of Stacy Bartlett's apartment and shoved the corsage box he carried behind his back. He was early, and, as a moment passed with no response, he speculated uneasily upon the possibility of having caught her in the shower. He was relieved when the door opened. “H'ya, kid,” he greeted her lightly, and maneuvered inside with his box still behind him. “All set to paint the town red, white and purple?” She walked ahead of him into the living room. “Your-” He broke off as he caught sight of her averted face, creased with tears, and eyes reddened and swollen. “What the hell's the matter, Stacy?” he demanded, his voice rising.
“N-nothing.” She turned her back to hide her face.
“Nothin'!” he snorted. “You look like it's nothin', all right.”
“D-don't look at me,” she pleaded. “I sh-shouldn't have let you in until I p-pulled myself together.”
“Somethin' wrong at home?” he asked quickly.
“N-no.” She knuckled her eyes frankly, took a deep breath, faced about and tried to smile at him. “Aren't I an awful b-baby?”
“So tell me about it,” he invited.
She turned again until her face was in profile and he couldn't read her expression. “I lost my j-job, that's all.” She struggled to hold her voice steady. “I don't know why I'm c-crying about it. It just-it just came as a s-surprise.”
Johnny felt winded. He had run up the scale on a dozen things, each succeedingly worse. Still, what's worse to a twenty-year-old going it alone in a strange town than losing her job? “Look, kid,” he began awkwardly, then stopped because she had noticed the position of his arm.
“You brought me something?” she asked with an upturn in her tone. She moved to him quickly and tugged his arm into view. “Oh, a corsage!” she exclaimed at sight of the box.