Red had been a decent kid. She had to give up her decency to do something important. Something had a meaning for her... and some day she was going to need me again. She needed me more now than she ever did. O.K., I was hers, then.
They don't start walking the streets until midnight, if that's what you're after. But if you're in a hurry there are guys you can see who will steer you straight to a house and pick up their cut later. Usually they're sallow-faced punks with sharp pointed faces and wise eyes that shift nervously, and they keep toying with change in their pockets or a key chain hooked to high-pleated pants as they talk out of the corner of their mouths.
Cobbie Bennett was like that. As long as there are girls who make a business out of it, you'll find guys like Cobbie. The only shadow he cast was by artificial light, and he looked it. I found him in a dirty bar near Canal Street, his one hand cupped around a highball and his other hooked in his belt, in earnest conversation with a couple of kids who couldn't have been more than seventeen. Both of them looked like high-school seniors out to spend a week's allowance.
I didn't wait for them to finish talking. Both kids looked at me once when I nudged in, beside them, turned a little white and walked away without a word.
"Hullo, Cobbie," I said.
The pimp was more like a weasel backed into a corner than a man. "What do you want?"
"Not what you're selling. By the way, who are you selling these days?"
"Try and find out, banana nose."
I said O.K. and grabbed a handful of skin around his leg and squeezed. Cobbie dropped his drink and started cursing. When spit drooled out of the corner of his mouth I quit and ordered him another drink. He could hardly find his face with it. "I could punch holes in you and make you talk if I felt like it, pal." I grinned.
"Damn it, what'd you do that for?" His eyes were squinted almost shut, chopping me up into little pieces. He rubbed his leg and winced. "I don't have to draw you pitchers, you know what I'm doing. Same thing I been doing right along. What's it to you?"
"Working for an outfit?"
"No, just me." His tone was sullen.
"Who was the redhead who was murdered the other night, Cobbie?"
This time his eyes went wide and he twitched the corner of his mouth. "Who says she was murdered?"
"I do." The bartender drew a beer and shoved it at me. While I sipped it I watched the pimp. Cobbie was scared. I could see him try to shrink down inside his clothes, making himself as unobtrusive as possible, as though it weren't healthy to be seen with me. That put him in a class with Shorty... he had been scared, too.
"The papers said she was hit by a car. You call that murder?"
"I didn't say what killed her. I said she was murdered."
"So what am I supposed to do?"
"Cobbie... you wouldn't want me to get real sore at you, would you?" I waited a second, then, "Well... ?"
He was slow in answering. His eyes sort of crawled up to meet mine and stayed there. Cobbie licked his lips nervously, then he turned and finished his drink with a gulp. When he put the glass down he said, "You're a dirty son of a bitch, Hammer. If I was one of them hop-heads I'd go get a sniff and a rod and blow your goddam guts out. I don't know who the hell the redhead was except another whore and I don't give a damn either. I worked her a couple of times, but mostly she wasn't home to play ball and I got complaints from the guys, so I dropped her. Maybe it was lucky for me that I did, because right after it I got word that she was hot as hell."
"Who passed the word?"
"How should I know? The grapevine don't come from one guy. Enough people said it, so I believed it and forgot her. One of the other babes told me she wasn't doing so good. The trade around here ain't like it is uptown. We don't get no swells... some kids maybe, like them you loused up for me, but the rest is all the jerks who don't care what they get so long as they get it. They heard the word and laid off, too. She wasn't making a nickel."
"Keep talking." He knew what I was after.
Cobbie rapped on the bar for another drink. He wasn't talking very loud now. "Get off me, will you! I don't know why she was hot. Maybe some punk gunslinger wanted her for a steady and was getting rough. Maybe she was loaded three ways to Sunday. All I know is she was hot and in this business a word is good enough for me. Why don't'cha ask somebody else?"
"Who? You got this end sewed up pretty tight, Cobbie. Who else is there to ask? I like the way you talk. I like it so much that I might spread it around that you and me have been pretty chummy and you've been yapping your greasy little head off. Why should I ask somebody else when I got you to tell me. Maybe I don't know who to ask."
His face was white as it could get. He hunched forward to get his drink and almost spilled that one too. "... Once she said she worked a house..." He finished the highball and muttered the address as he wiped his mouth.
I didn't bother to thank him; it was favor enough to throw my drink down silently, pick up my change and walk out of there. When I reached the street I crossed over and stood in the recess of a hallway for a few minutes. I stuck a butt between my lips and had just cupped my hands around a match when Cobbie came out, looked up and down the street, jammed his hands in his pockets and started walking north. When he rounded the corner I got in the car and sat there a few minutes, trying to figure just what the hell was going on.
One redheaded prostitute down on her luck. She was killed, her room was searched, and her ring was missing.
One trigger-happy greaseball who searched her room because she stole his blackmail set-up. He said.
One ex-con who ran a hash house the redhead used for a hangout. He was scared.
One pimp who knew she was hot but couldn't say why. Maybe he could, but he was scared, too.
It was a mess no matter how you looked at it, and it was getting messier all the time. That's why I was so sure. Death is like a bad tooth... no matter what's wrong with it, you pull it out and it's all over. That's the way death usually is; after that people can talk all they want, they even do things for dead joes that they wouldn't do for the living. Death is nice and clean and antiseptic. It ends all trouble. Someone gathers up your belongings, says a word of praise, and that's it. But the redhead's was a messy death. There was something unclean about it like a wound that has healed over on top, concealing an ugly, festering sore brewing a deadly poison that will kill again.
When the butt burned down to my fingers I started the car and shoved off, threading my way across town to the address Cobbie had given me. New York had its sinkholes, too, and the number of this one placed it smack in the middle of the slime. It was a one-way street of rats' nests, with the river at one end and a saloon on each corner, peopled with men and women that had the flat vacant look of defeat stamped on their faces.
I checked the numbers and found the one I wanted, but all it was was a number, because the house was gone. Unless you can call a flame-gutted skeleton of masonry a house. The doorway yawned open like a leper's mouth and each window had its scar tissue of peeling paint.
The end of the trail. I swore and kicked at the curb.
A kid about ten looked at me and said, "Some jerk t'rew a match out the winder inta the garbage coupla weeks ago. Most of the dames got killed."