"Sorry about that."
"Maybe it's not as often, but..."
"Sorry about that too."
"Don't be. Think of the money I save."
The last were three concert-type shots of a woman singing at a stand-up microphone. It partially obscured her face, but it was obvious she was a real beauty. Her platinum hair was straight and long, accentuating her rich brown complexion that went with features that seemed Hispanic and Asian at once. Certainly that red silk dress split up the side to her waist and exposing a long, lush leg had an oriental look, and helped make her look startlingly erotic.
"Who's this one?" I held the photos up.
"Her name's Chrome. Or anyway that's how he referred to her. A performer, pretty famous I guess. Some exotic looker, eh?"
"Not the girl next door," I admitted. "I'm beginning to think our old pal was a dirty old man."
Cummings let out a low laugh. "She was business, Mike. A friend of his in L.A., a reporter, wanted some shots for a show-business rag—this Chrome doll is apparently on the rise."
"So are most of the men in her audiences, I'd guess."
"Yeah, and the rest are gay."
"I didn't think Doolan dealt that much in photography."
"No more than any of us—in the P.I. game, you find your way around a camera. He didn't just work for me, you know. He did jobs for reporters, both local and guys like that one in L.A."
"A lot of that kind of thing?"
"If he was in the mood. If whatever it was appealed to him."
I nodded. "What's in the other cabinet?"
"Bills, mostly. Receipts, bank statements. He never threw anything like that away. Tell you, though, you'll waste your time going through them. He never looked at anything in there—he just put things there, every month, every year. You know, real pack-rat stuff. Funny, considering how anal retentive he was about keeping his apartment neat."
I pulled out the bottom drawer. This one was real interesting—one big folder on me went back ten years and wound up with glossy black-and-whites of me on the ground bleeding after that last shoot-out.
I still held the .45 and the lifeless feet of Sal Bonetti were in the background. My side started to throb again and I could feel the fire under my ribs. Something foul seemed to be caught in my throat.
Pete said, "You okay, Mike?"
I could feel his eyes on me. I stuffed the photos back, swallowed, and nodded.
"Maybe you could use another beer?"
I shook my head. "I'm all right. It just happens sometimes."
"What happens?"
"I start hurting in a couple of ways."
The folder had three other pictures in it, front and side views of Alberto Bonetti, in prison casual with his very own number under his name. There was an odd, implied pertinence about those pictures—the total lack of any other information suggested a special degree of importance.
Clashes between Bonetti and Doolan weren't frequent, and those were some years back. Both had come out of the same squalid Lower East Side neighborhood around the same time, hating each other like primeval enemies, one good, one bad.
How much did you hate Doolan, Alberto? Enough to have him killed? Enough to get me back here so you could watch my guts churn, knowing my great mentor was dead like your lousy kid?
Motive? Sure, Bonetti, you have one hell of a motive.
From across the room, Pete read my mind. "You speak to Pat about old Alberto?"
"No."
"Well, I can tell you that Pat already checked him out. Bonetti and four of his guys were at Gaspar Rozzi's wedding in the Bronx when Doolan died."
"That doesn't mean much, except maybe Alberto bothered to be seen by a shitload of people."
"Still, how the hell could he have managed it? There are contract killers who can pull off some pretty tricky kills, Mike—but could a stranger have got in Doolan's door and staged that suicide?"
This time I stared back at him. "Somebody did."
Cummings came around and knelt at his cooler again and brought out two more beers, tossed me one. "How can I help, Mike?"
I thumbed the can open. I was starting to feel tired again. I didn't remember feeling tired in the old days. "What was Doolan doing this past year, Pete? What was he involved in?"
"Kid, I wish I could tell you something fancy, but Doolan had turned social worker. You got to realize, his action days were long gone, just like me. Hell, working over the telephone was plenty, and when it came to a lot of legwork, forget it. No, his business, if you can call it that, was neighborhood work, a lot of lodge things ... like giving advice to kids and parents and even political types. He was good at that."
"No action at all?"
"Like what? Every Friday he went to the gun range, and fired off fifty rounds with the boys before lunch. But he's been doing that for years."
"What, a police range?"
"No. It's in Manhattan."
"A gun range in Manhattan?"
"You've heard of it, Mike—the Enfilade. All the society sports go there for a macho kick."
"Yeah. Yeah, I know the place. Pretty stiff fee to belong to that club."
"Hell, Doolan had an honorary life membership. Being a big ex-cop has its perks."
I'd check that out. "What about friends? Who was he still close to?"
"He went to too many funerals to have many left. Acquaintances he had plenty of. Everybody liked Doolan."
"Not everybody," I said.
We sipped our beers.
"Pete, you got any ideas? Any leads?"
"Mike, I ran outa ideas a long time ago. Ideas are for young guys like you. And leads are for real cops, not old broken-down P.I.s."
"I hope you're not referring to me."
"You? Hell, you're a youngster. No, look at me—I bought the suicide bit all the way. There wasn't one thing wrong with it, not how it went down. I could see myself taking the same route he did under those conditions, and the whole world would've believed it."
"Only it didn't happen that way," I said.
He put his glasses back on and peered at me over the rims. "I hope not. But the facts—"
"You're confusing facts with what we think we see." I stood up and put the empty can on his desk. "Okay if I use your phone, Pete?"
"Sure."
I called Pat and said I was ready to check the Mathes girl's place out. He said he'd meet me there in half an hour.
At the door, I said to Cummings, "Anything comes to mind, Pete, I'm over at the Commodore."
"Not at the old stand?"
"My office is closed for now. I'm just looking into a couple of things before I go back to Florida."
"Say, you still with that big, beautiful brunette? My God, she never changes. What a lovely woman. If you had any sense, Mike, you'd have married her ten years ago."
"I'm not with her, Pete. And if I had any sense, we wouldn't have just had this conversation."
His expression said he felt he'd stuck his foot in it, and I got out of there before he could recover.
I knew what Pat was up to. He was the guy who never left the neighborhood, taking the old returnee around the block to show him the changes since he left. It's hard to believe, but unless you've gone away and come back, nothing stands still. Buildings fall, blocks get chewed up, license plates change colors, and faces don't smile right anymore.
Ginnie Mathes had lived in a dilapidated brownstone four blocks from where she'd worked. The super had a basement apartment in the building next door and hadn't known his tenant was dead until Pat flashed his badge and told him so.