“And how did you pay him off, Lisa?”
Her smile was unconcerned. “It... didn’t matter.”
“Fly’s no better than the rest, kid. Where is he?”
“Are you... going to hurt him?”
“No.” I leaned forward to center her attention. “He took something from me. I want it back.”
She frowned, trying to think, then grimaced and said, “You... you hooked, Irish? You can get the... junk anytime.”
“I’m not hooked, kid. I want that capsule Fly took. Where did he put it?”
“He needs it.” There was a defiance in her face I knew I couldn’t break.
So I said, “It’s only sugar, Lisa. He won’t get anything from it but trouble.”
It wasn’t Fly she cared for. It was the little guy, the creature, the beat-down thing that made him so much like she was herself. It was the two-of-a-kind feeling, people in the same foxhole, wounded and hurting with terrifying death at any moment.
“Is... it true?”
I nodded.
Without seeming to cry, the tears began an erratic course down her cheeks. “He put it... somewhere. For later, he said. Now he can’t go to his place...”
“I know, Big Step has one of his boys outside waiting to cut him off.”
Absently, she wiped the tears away. “He knows where Ernie South... keeps his supply. He was going... to break in and...” Abruptly, the tears stopped. “You know Ernie South?” she asked me. Some of the drunkenness seemed to have drained out of her.
“We met. He’s a bum.”
Her mouth tightened. “Irish...” she opened her mouth to say something, stopped, reconsidering, then said vacantly, “He’s... his king... heroin... the worst of them all.”
“Did Fly tell you where he was going?”
“Tarbush’s Coffee Shop. Fly... he stole Ernie’s key once. He had another made.”
“He’s nuts! Ernie’ll chew him up. He can’t pull a stunt like that!”
She grinned again and nearly slid off the chair. Her eyes were half closed when she said, “No?” then her head fell forward and I caught her before she hit the floor. Lisa Williams was out like a light but there was still that satisfied grin on her mouth. I picked her up, dropped her in the bed and went out, making sure the door locked shut behind me.
I had just reached the front door of the vestibule when I saw the outline of a figure on the other side. I flattened against the wall, deep in the shadows, glad the overhead bulb was out. The door swung open and the guy standing there smirked to himself. Briefly, I caught the wink of light from the open blade in his hand, then he closed the door silently and started back toward Lisa’s room.
When I laid the barrel of the .45 across the back of his head he went down like a withering flower and I grabbed him before he hit the floor. Even in the semi-darkness I could see he was a pasty faced snake with all the evil inside him written across his features. The dark gray suit he wore was the kind they only sell south of Jacksonville and when I yanked the wallet out of his pocket I confirmed it. The driver’s license was issued to one Walter Weir of Miami, Florida. I said, “Hello, Pigeon,” and slipped the wallet back.
The car he had used was a beat up black Buick ten years old, still carrying Florida tags. Nobody saw me lug him out and if they did, nobody cared. Shouldered drunks weren’t unusual around that neighborhood even in the pre-dawn hours. Pigeon Weir did me a favor in a way. It saved hunting up a cab. I drove six blocks North and three across town to where Tarbush ran his coffee shop, an unlikely little place popularized by the trucking crowd rather than the beats. Tarbush had been nailed twice for pushing Bennies on the teenage set and did a stretch in Elmira, but if he was letting Ernie South use his place for a storehouse it looked like he never cut loose from his old connections.
Pigeon wasn’t about to come to for a long while yet so I just let him slump there half on the floor out of sight. When I saw the silhouette of a roving prowl car heading toward me, I went down beside him and waited until it passed. Then I slid out of the car and edged, toward the narrow alley that separated Tarbush’s Coffee Shop from the garage next door.
A night light was on inside, a single low wattage bulb throwing enough of a glow to make out the array of tables and the short counter with its oversized coffee urns. But it wasn’t the front section I was interested in. All the side windows were barred, and at the far end was the service entrance, a steel plated door that looked impossible to force. I swore under my breath and out of habit thumbed the latch to check it.
Without a sound, the door swung open inward. The .45 jumped into my hand and I was in with the door closed at my back and the darkness around me like a blanket. If anybody was there with his eyes already tuned to the dark, I could be a perfect target and if I moved, they could pick me out by sound as well. So I stood there waiting, the rod out and showing big and if they saw that, they knew one flash of gunfire would get a barrage back and it might not be worth the chance.
A full minute passed before I knew I was alone. I let my breath out slowly, listening to the stillness, then flicked on a match. I was alone, all right, but only in a way. Crumpled on the floor among the wreckage of cardboard cartons and scattered cans that had spilled out mounds of coffee was the pathetic body of Fly who lay there with his eyes wide open, his neck cocked at a screwy angle and a dark bluish welt on the side of his neck.
Somebody had cooled Fly the hard way. He had torn his clothes apart, ripped open seams and turned the pockets inside out and I knew damn well what he was looking for. But he never found it. Every last possibility had been exhausted and the marks of frustration were there marked by where the body had been kicked a half dozen times.
It wasn’t Fly who had opened the cans. If he had, he would have found what he came for. Idly tossed aside were two plastic wrapped packets and it didn’t take twenty questions to figure out what they held. Somebody had finished Fly’s search for him, not knowing just what it was he was after.
I looked at the body again and saw the bruise under one eye and the smashed lips. The fingernails of one hand were streaked with blood and I knew why he died too. Manos Dekker had picked up Fly’s trail somewhere but didn’t know he was dealing with a hophead half-crazy from narcotic starvation and Fly put up a fight. It was his last. He was chopped down quickly and efficiently without knowing what it was all about.
The stuff that had been in his pockets was piled on the floor, in the middle of the odds and ends, a new brass key. The match burned out and I lit another, picked up the key and went to the door and fitted it in the lock from the outside. It was the type you had to lock by key when you left with an oversize barrel bolt on the inside. In his haste, Fly hadn’t barred the door and left himself wide open for murder.
And the chase was still on.
I locked the door, went out to the car and drove it to the nearest subway station. I pulled in next to a hydrant deliberately, took the knife Pigeon was going to use on Lisa, wrapped a handkerchief around it, and rammed it up to the hilt in his tail. He never even moaned, but he would tomorrow, and he’d get the message loud and clear. I wiped the wheel clean, got out and went down the Kiosk to catch the downtown local.
Chapter 6
Statistics say most of all police cases are solved through the use of informants. There are three kinds: stoolies who squeal to ingratiate themselves with the cops, those who talk when the cops put the heat on them one way or another, and those who dump information into HQ anonymously to get the competition out of the way.
But there are others of the night people who know the same things, untouchable in their own way, living by the strange code that separates those of the badge from their own kind. And I was one of them. Once. Until they found out different I’d still be one.