With them I could play. I had a .45 calibre instrument that could sound off loud and clear, but with cops you don’t play like that. On somebody else the fuzz would have stepped up and made the pinch without waiting. For this one time I had to be an exception because of what happened a year ago, and for that they were being decent. Something like General Arnold’s boot if you got enough smarts to know what I mean.
The cops didn’t watch me. I was there, part of their peripheral vision, they weren’t in any hurry at all and were glad to sit in out of the rain and the cold for a few minutes. They had the faces of cops all over the world that you can’t miss if you’re in the business on one side or the other.
Across the room with his back to the wall, Wally Pee who ran numbers for Sal Upsidion started to sweat and couldn’t finish what was on his tray. He kept glancing from Newbolder and Schmidt to Izzy Goldwitz, who was at the counter getting seconds, because Izzy had six grand in cash in the overnight bag he carried and with Sal Upsidion you didn’t give any excuses if it didn’t get turned in. When Izzy paid the cashier and started back he caught Wally’s signal and turned white, but by then it was too late to do anything except finish supper, so he sat down and tried to bluff it out.
I could have gone over and told them, but it didn’t make any difference anyway and for them it was better to sweat a little so that the next time they’d be on their toes more. Newbolder’s quick case of the place didn’t make them since I was his target and not much else mattered, so the numbers boys were off the hook for this time, anyway.
Funny, funny.
New York after dark, a vivid chameleon who by day was a roaring scaly dragon of business and ceremony, and by night a soft quivering thing because the guts of the city had gone home leaving the shell to be invaded by parasites.
The few who stayed, and the tourists, kept to the Gay White Way as they used to name it, clubbing, bar hopping or taking in a show. But the perimeter of life had closed down to the very heart of the city. Beyond the perimeter was where the dying came. A few arteries of light and life extended crosstown, went up a ways and down a ways, but that was all. The great verdant cancer of Central Park was like a sparkling jewel, laced with the multicolor of taxis whose beams probed ahead of them with twin fingers, always searching. Like Damocles.
Around me the restaurant was packed with people from Jersey, Brooklyn, the Island, all getting ready to go home or take in the town a little. The regulars were there too, the handful of natives whose home was Manhattan no matter what. Some were night people like me and Wally Pee and Izzy; the others came because the food was good and inexpensive.
I wondered what my chances were on the rap. They didn’t look good at all.
Somebody had knocked off Penny Stipetto. Two days before I had belted his ass from one end of 45th and Second all the way to the next corner for shaking down Rudy Max and when he healed up he strapped on a rod and went looking for me with a skinful of big H to keep his courage up.
Word travels fast in this town. I got the news and passed it back that I was ready and available any time, any place and if I saw him first he was going to get laid out.
Trouble was, I didn’t see him first.
Somebody else did and they found Penny Stipetto wedged behind a couple of garbage cans two blocks away from my pad with a hole in his head.
That was enough for the remaining brothers Stipetto. They spread out a net across the city that was as efficient as any the fuzz could throw and pulled the strings tight until I only had one block to run in and one place to go.
The condemned man ate a hearty meal.
Hell, I was glad Newbolder and Schmidt found me first. This was the age of enlightened crime and a gang shoot-out comes only of immediate necessity. Revenge is a thing of the past except for the extreme occasion, and if the law will do the job equally as well, then let it go, man. In fact, the brothers Stipetto would only be too happy to help the fuzz nail my hide. They’d make damn sure somebody saw me in the area at the time Penny took the big slide and damn sure any alibi I had would fold if they had to remove it forever.
In other words, I was a dead duck. I had no alibi to begin with unless a warm solo pad could be called one, the hole in Penny’s head was big enough to be made by at least a .45 and no spent slug was recovered for comparison. I had the motive, the time, a probable weapon and on top of it all, the critical, anti-social personality that, according to the psycho meds, made such a deed possible.
In short, I was a hood.
Newbolder sipped his coffee and glanced at his watch. He wasn’t rushing me, but I knew he’d like to get off his shift on time and a cop can only be decent so long. By then Wally Pee and Izzy Goldswitz had caught the pitch and were begging me with their eyes to get the hell out before the cops decided to case the place for any other interesting characters and spotted them.
Let them take care of themselves, I thought, and went back to the Hungarian goulash. It was good and there was no telling when I’d be getting another plate of the stuff.
I had almost finished when the broad sat down. Like they’ll always do, she sat down directly opposite me rather than at the side, trying to make out as if she had the table all to herself. I knew she was an out-of-towner when she ate without taking the dishes off her tray, something a cafeteria regular never would do.
There was something odd about her I couldn’t place, but in New York you don’t stare too long or take deliberate second looks because privacy is a funny thing, like the props in theatre-in-the-round. Privacy exists because you pretend nothing else is there and in a chow joint you’re expected to obey the rules of the game.
But I couldn’t help the second look. I made it as surreptitious as possible and found the flaw. The tall girl with the deep chestnut hair was made up to perfection, if perfection meant deliberately disguising a classic beauty to become just another fairly pretty dame worth smiling at sometimes, but not much more.
They do that sometimes. Broads get screwy ideas about their looks and plenty of times I’ve seen real treats done up in trick suits in the beatnik shops.
Who are you today, honey — Hepburn? You could be LaMarr if you liked. You have a luscious mouth with the kind of pouty lips that can kiss like crazy but the lipstick is wrong. That eyebrow pencil accent is way off too. Way off. And you can’t quite erase genes that put a tricky, exotic slant in your eyes and cheekbones with cleverly applied green shadows and too-pale makeup.
When she shrugged the white trench coat off, I saw it was only her face that had been changed to the mediocre. Nothing could have been done to alter the magnificence of her body. There was just too much of her, just too much big, lovely much.
The condemned man ate a hearty meal. Visually, that is.
So while they waited for me, those outside watching to make sure those inside didn’t slip, I feasted a little bit and knew I was wearing a crooked grin that couldn’t be helped but could be hidden if I chewed hard enough.
Newbolder had shifted his seat a little so he could see around the broad, not giving up his cop’s habits for any reason, and I finished my goulash and started in on my pie.
It was just a voice. It was strangely low, detached and was there without seeming to come from any one point. It was almost totally lost in the grand hum of voices that kept the room in motion and for a second I couldn’t place it.
When I did I kept on eating, doing a quick think because it was the broad speaking to me con style without moving her lips or changing her expression, and all the while managing to eat as if she were completely alone.