I frowned at him. “Who?”
“I dunno. Ask Pedro. Just get away from me.”
“Sure, Izzy. Thanks.”
“From you I want nothin’, not even thanks.”
Pedro was a little Puerto Rican with a multiplicity of last names nobody could pronounce who worked his heart out hustling dirty dishes to support six brothers and sisters. He was quick as a banty rooster and always ready with a big smile, but when I found him in the back room off the kitchen he was neither quick nor smiling. He was sitting on an upturned lard bucket, his head in his hands and when I came in he jumped, his face contorted, his hands clutching his belly.
I said, “Hi, Pete.”
When he recognized me he tied on a smile but it didn’t fit very well and he dropped it. “Mr. Ryan,” he acknowledged softly.
“What happened, kid?”
“I theenk nothing happened, please.”
With my toe I hooked an empty coke box and set it up so I could squat down beside him. “Let’s have it Pete. Who took you apart?”
“It ees nothing.”
“Don’t kid me. I’ll find out anyway, so save yourself some grief. Whoever did it can come back.”
Sudden terror filled his eyes and he huddled up against the wall, his teeth biting into his lip. He looked at me, shrugged resignedly. “A man, he look for Fly. He look for you too.”
“Who came first?”
“You, Mr. Ryan. He ask about you the other night. I theenk he is police and I tell heem how you left here. I tell heem how Fly was back there waiting too.”
“What else?”
“Nothing. I can’t tell heem where you are. I tell heem where Fly lives after he hit me.”
“Describe him.”
“Not beeg as you, Mr. Ryan. Funny voice like I have to speak English, only different. Very bad man. Mad.”
“So you know where Fly is?”
He shook his head. “No. I do not see him seence then.”
“He was your friend, Pete. You know he was hooked on H?”
“Sure, I know.”
“Do you know where he gets his stuff?”
“Before, from Ernie South mostly. Now, I do not know.”
“Anybody around here?”
“Nobody will sell to Fly now. He ees in a very bad way, I theenk.”
I stood up and rubbed the top of his head. “Okay, kid, thanks. Don’t you worry about the guy coming back. Until it’s over you’ll get a little cover.”
“Please, you don’t have to...”
“No sweat, Pete. No trouble at all.” I grinned at him and this time he managed a small smile for real. I said, “There a phone around here?”
He pointed toward the door. “Right inside the kitchen.”
I reached Newbolder at his home after the precinct gave me his number. He said, “Sergeant Newbolder speaking, who is this?”
“Your buddy, Irish.”
He didn’t say anything for a few seconds and I could hear him breathing, then flick on a cigarette lighter.
“Okay, I can’t put a tracer on your call from here, Irish. Now what’s the pitch?”
“There’s a kid at the Cafeteria, a bus boy named Pedro. Maybe you’d better keep him covered for a few days. He just took a shellacking from an unknown person that might fit into your case.”
I could hear a pencil scratching, then: “You got friends of your own who could do that, Ryan.”
“Yeah, I know, but that’s what you’re for.”
“Don’t get snotty,” he said. “You’re after something.”
“A hophead named Fly.”
“What about him?”
“Has he been seen around?”
“No squawks on him.”
“Then you’d better run him down quick before you have a corpse on your hands. Big Step cut off his supply and if he doesn’t fold he’ll knock off somebody to get a charge.”
“Where does he fit in?”
“I’d like to tell you, copper, but if I want out of this mess I have to get out myself.”
“You’re not doing too well. If you make another day on the streets your luck is running first class.”
“I’ll play along with it.”
“When you get smart, pass it up. Right now that Federal agency you shilled for a couple years ago is breathing down your neck. You’re on everybody’s ‘S’ list and it’s only a matter of time. Until Big Step moves we can’t lay a hand on him and by then it’ll be too late, you’ll be dead, so I recommend protective custody.”
“And a murder charge for bumping Penny Step? No dice, Sarge.”
Casually, he said, “Have it your way, friend.”
“I will.” Then I added, “By the way, how is Karen Sinclair?”
And just as off handedly he said, “I couldn’t tell you. An hour ago she was kidnapped from her room.”
It was like I had been sapped again. “What?”
“Blame yourself a little, Irish. Try this one on your conscience if you have any.”
My fingers squeezed the phone so hard my knuckles turned white. “How was it worked?”
“Two doctors under a gun. The third guy posed as an intern. He shot the guy he took the uniform from in front of the doctors and they had no choice except to go along. They moved her into an ambulance under the guard’s noses and got her out. We found the ambulance ten minutes ago, but she could be anywhere by now.”
“Damn!”
“So chalk one dead girl up on your list, hood. I think you got the picture pretty well by now. We took Bill Grady in and he had to lay it out for us. You’ve made everybody a lot of trouble and when you dream, think of that lovely broad stretched out on a slab somewhere.”
Under my breath I began swearing, then stopped when I was so tight I wanted to tear the damn phone right off the wall. “They won’t kill her,” I said.
“No? Why?”
“Because I have what they want and it won’t do them a bit of good to bump her unless they know where she dropped the little goodie they’re all after.”
I hung up then, stared at the phone a minute, then crossed the kitchen and took the back way out through the service entrance. Fly was the key. Someplace he was roaming around carrying a bombshell of information big enough to tear apart the world. They knew it and I knew it, but I couldn’t get to it without making myself a target for the cops, Big Step and a team of Soviet killers.
The hell I couldn’t.
I was looking for a cab when the black Chevy came idling by. The light on the corner was green and in New York you don’t loaf when you have the signal on your side. It was too out of character for a cab with N.Y. plates and I had played too many games the same way not to notice it.
Even before the first shot flamed from the window I was down and rolling, scrambling sideways for the cover of the trash cans at the curb and right behind me two more rocketed off the sidewalk with a brief, shrill ricochetting scream before they plastered against the wall. I had just a single look at the face turned my way that was framed in the light of the street lamp, a sharp, hawklike face under a shock of pitch black hair with one unruly twist of it hanging down into his eyes.
The car was gone around the corner before I could get the gun out and except for a drunk who looked at me soddenly, nobody caught the action. They heard the noise though, even if most of it was contained inside the Chevy. Two couples were dodging traffic to get across the street, but before they made it or I had to offer any explanations, I got up, dusted myself off and started away.
The drunk wiped the drool from his mouth and laughed. “Nice friends you got, mister.”
“Only the best,” I told him.
So now I was being stalked. Somebody figured I might come back looking for Fly, or word would get to me about somebody looking for him. I was being set up very nicely by a pack of pros and the perimeter of the jungle was getting smaller and smaller. Well, I lived here too and I wasn’t going to make it easier for them.