I got to the hotel as the day shift was coming in and I had a chance to get a quick glance at the desk. The night man was just coming on with wrists fluttering all over the place and he looked like a whipped child every time he looked at Ames. The lobby was empty and I crossed to the elevator and as I did Ames spotted me, came around the desk and took me to one side. “You have anything in your room?”
“Nothing worth while. Why?”
“Paul... one of the bellboys... spotted the fag going in there and let me know about it. I gave him a clout in the mouth. Either he was curious or he was after your skin.”
I felt my shoulders start to crawl. “Listen...”
“It’s okay. He tried that before on somebody who was holing up here because the fuzz was looking for him. Thought he could pressure him into playing his little love games.”
“I’ll give him pressure.”
“Never mind, I took care of it. Just check your stuff. I don’t trust any of those AC-DC guys.”
“Sure.” I slapped his shoulder, threw a dirty look toward the desk and watched the guy turn away with a nervous little squeal. Nothing was missing from the room, but I had run enough shakedowns to know my stuff had been thoroughly searched. Later I’d take care of the guy my own way and he wouldn’t go snooping anywhere again.
I called the desk, got Ames just before he left and gave him Pete-the-Dog’s number. He was in a state of half sleep it took a couple of minutes to lose but he straightened up the second I told him what I wanted. I gave him the poop on Karen Sinclair’s kidnapping from the hospital and told him to spread the news to our people fast. There were always eyes around that saw everything and no matter how good you were, New York had just too many people who never seemed to sleep, whose eyes caught everything and could put the pieces together. Some of those people were ours. Pete said he’d get on it and I flopped back on the bed and closed my eyes.
It was raining when I woke. My watch said ten after five and outside in the premature dusk of fog and rain the offices were beginning to empty, spilling their occupants into taxis and subways. I cleaned up, shaved and got dressed, then headed for the Grand Canyon of New York.
On the corner I picked up a paper, scanning it to see if Fly’s body had been found. I was willing to bet it hadn’t shown up yet and if the absence of news was an indication, I was right. I scrounged up a box, packed the heroin into it, wrapped it in birthday paper and addressed it to Newbolder at the precinct house. It wouldn’t take them long to analyze the grains of coffee still sticking to the packets and locate their source. A few heads would roll and it was doing it the easy way.
Pete-the-Dog ran a news stand that was a clearing house for anything we wanted. He always knew who was under the heat and where the rabbits were holing up and if somebody had to jump fast to stay ahead of the fuzz, he saw the message got through. We always took care of our own. I caught him having a hamburger across the street from his corner spot and climbed up on a stool next to him. “What have you got, Pete?” I ordered coffee and when it came, sipped it slowly.
“You pull some big ones, Irish. Good thing you got friends. Remember Millie Slaker?”
“She still hustling?”
“Yeah. So she leaves a client where they dumped the ambulance. She seen this guy get out and walk back to the corner where another car was waiting. Millie, she’s in a doorway by now because she don’t like the setup, but she hears the guy tell the other one to stop at the Big Top for something to eat before they go back. Millie got outa there then and that was that, but I checked the Big Top Diner and Maxine Choo remembered them because they was both foreigners. Now Maxine’s a Hunkie, but she still picks up enough Polish to get the drift of their talk and hears them mention Matt Kawolski’s place down by the bridge. They was both arguing about something like if they should check in and pick up expenses right then or wait. She got kind of busy then and when she listened back in they had decided, paid up and left.
“I sent Benny down to talk to Matt but with all the seamen dropping in his place he couldn’t tell who was new and who wasn’t, besides half the guys there never spoke English anyway, and Matt, he’s too damn busy to bend an ear to somebody else’s chatter.”
I said, “Get a description from Millie?”
“What am I, dumb?” he asked indignantly. “Sure. The guy she made was average all around and you couldn’t pick him outa a crowd except he had only half an ear. Maxine didn’t see that side of him, but the other guy she said was a mug type. Tough, broken nose, that kind of jazz. You know?”
“It’s enough.”
“So you goin’ down there?”
“Tonight. Keep some of our people around.”
“Sure, they’re on the street. They won’t let up until I call ’em off, don’t take too long. They still have bucks to make and it ain’t easy. This convention crowd is a tight bunch with their loot pinned to their pockets.”
I looked at my watch. “It has to be fast.” I threw a buck on the counter to cover the bill.
Pete-the-Dog suddenly grabbed my arm. “Hey Irish, Big Step softening up?”
“What do you mean?”
“Carney said he took his spotter off Fly’s joint. Maybe he ain’t out for poor Fly no more. All the time he had that punchy Martino staked out to nail Fly if he went home and now Martino is gone.”
I started to put the pieces together and they fit nicely. When Tarbush opened he would have seen Fly’s body and gotten to Ernie South. With the cache of H gone they wouldn’t have time to play any fancy tricks, so with Big Step’s help they must have rigged it to get Fly back to his pad and let him be found there. Nice trick in the daytime, but it could be worked. Right now Ernie must be flipping with his supply of narcotics gone. I wished I had had time to shake down the place completely.
I said, “No, he’s not getting soft. See you later.”
“Sure thing.”
The darkness had closed in completely by the time I reached Matt Kawolski’s place. It was a dirty joint on the corner across the street from the river that stunk of city sewage from the vents in the area, stale beer and just plain age, but it was in a handy spot for everybody from the day crew at the nearby newspaper to the night crowd of seamen, bums and escapees from a city housing project a few blocks away. I hadn’t been there in five years so I wasn’t worried about being recognized, and Matt wouldn’t even tip his own mother to an old face.
I managed to snag Matt alone in the back kitchen and I didn’t have to paint any pictures for him. Before I could ask he said, “Blue station wagon and a late model sedan parked outside Mort Gilfern’s print shop. He don’t get much action never.”
“He the one that turns out that Commie newssheet?”
“Yeah, hands it out free to the seamen. Plays up trouble, goes for ship tieups, backs hardnosed union demands. I won’t let him in here since he was in the May Day parade. Says he’s a liberal, but I know what he is.”
“How’d you hear?”
“Billie Cole said it.” He threw a quick look to the half closed door and wiped the sweat from his face. “That guy with the half a ear...”
“What about him?”
“Billie saw him gettin’ out a car. He been there before, Billie said.”
“Thanks, Matt.”
“You gonna bring any trouble in here?”
“Nope.”
“Can if you want. Enough boys here to take care of it. They ain’t all alike. Some of you guys from uptown are scrounging around too.”
“I’ll yell if I need them.”