Singer suggested I talk to Angelo Sito. I knew the name—Sito had been a heavyweight back in the '40s, had been a contender for a couple of years, then in the '50s became a semi-name who could throw a fight and build a younger slugger's rep. The fight racket had made Sito enough dough to retire, not to luxury, but to an apartment on this almost respectable street.
I bought the old boxer a beer at the corner tavern. He had been a mauler and had come away with the requisite cauliflower ears and bulbous nose broken so many times, it qualified more for decoration than breathing apparatus. With his full head of salt-and-pepper hair, he had a rough-hewn dignity about him, wearing a white short-sleeve shirt and tan slacks that were clean and fairly new.
"I heard of you, Hammer," he said, his grin big and white and store-bought. "You had a few fights yourself in your day."
"Not in the ring."
"Safer in the ring. They don't shoot at you."
Not unless you don't throw the fights you're supposed to, I thought.
But I said, "Alex Singer told me you could fill me in on Russell Frazer. Your neighbor who got stabbed to death yesterday?"
Sito sneered. "He should have only bought it sooner. He was a miserable lowlife bastard."
"That's okay, Angelo," I said, and sipped my Blue Ribbon. "They probably don't need you to deliver the eulogy."
The fighter's lopsided grin said he liked that crack.
Then he went into it: "I got a kid in his twenties. He's married, has a little boy, and he's got a decent job in the Garment District. Then he starts hanging around that fuck pad across the street. Pot, booze, broads."
"Some people would say that's just a good time."
"Not when you risk your job and marriage and your kid's welfare." His eyes managed to narrow, despite their puffy surroundings. "I think there was more'n pot up there, Mike. Hate to say this, but ... my boy, I think, was maybe doing harder stuff. Not horse or anything, but the nose candy, might be."
"You said he was in his twenties. He's a big boy."
He shook his head. "I can't give you anything but a feeling, Mike. A hunch. But I think that this louse Frazer was trying to get my kid into some kind of ... illegal crapola. I don't know what. Could be dope. Could be a goddamn bank robbery, I don't know."
"No offense, Angelo, but it's no secret you got your hands dirty back in the old days."
He just shrugged. "Doesn't mean a guy can't want better for his kid. Anyway, what harm did I ever do anybody? Fight game's just entertainment."
"So is dope, some would say."
"You don't O.D. watching boxing."
I sipped the Pabst. "So you told your boy to stay away from Frazer?"
"I did. And his mother did, and his wife did, and he's straight as an arrow now, Mike, I swear to you."
"And that's all it took?"
"No. I also went across the street and told that lowlife bastard Frazer to get lost or get broken up."
Even in his fifties, Angelo Sito could put the hurt on a guy.
He added, "Bum moved out."
"Wise decision. You know where to?"
"Some hotel downtown, I think. I ain't seen him around since."
"You know a kid named Norm Brix, Angelo?"
"Yeah. He's in the hospital, I hear."
"I put him there."
His scar-tissue-heavy brows beetled. "He tried to jump some other kid, right? Yeah, it was in the papers! Were you mixed up in that...?"
"What about Brix?"
"His parents used to live on this street. Mom was decent, Pop was a drinker. The father burned himself up in bed, smoking and drinking. The mother moved upstate with her sister, but the kid stayed around here."
"What about the kid?"
"Nasty. A bully. A dropout. He was pals with this Frazer slob, you know. That's one thing I can give my son credit for—he never liked the Brix kid."
"Well, thanks, Angelo."
"Thank you, Mike." He got up and slid out of the booth. "I'll buy next time."
"Deal."
I stayed put and finished the beer I'd only nursed along, talking to the old pug. Just sat there, thinking it through....
The connection was there, all right, and maybe Velda had it figured—these punks have strange loyalties, and Frazer trying to knife me really could add up to revenge.
I let it go through my mind once more, then threw the notion on the discard pile. So I'd caused Brix some grief, so what? Brix was still just a punk. Frazer had something going for him, something bringing in real dough. Punk loyalties stop when one of them jumps from the minors over into the big league.
I couldn't help but picture those hippie kids in Frazer's fancy pad, a guy in mod threads and Beatle boots lording it over kids in T-shirts and jeans, playing the big-shot host. He would not view the likes of Brix, Felton, and Haver as equals, or even associates, much less the kind of friends whose misfortune might inspire him to take it upon himself to go wipe out the guy responsible.
Frazer was a god to these punks, but in the greater scheme, he was just another minion—a minion someone above had dispatched to take me out.
I picked up the afternoon paper and read it over another cold beer. On page three I found the story that Frazer had been identified, but was still classed as a victim of a mugging-kill. When I finished the funnies and the coffee, I threw a buck on the counter and went outside.
Saxony Hospital was two blocks away.
Billy Blue had been released from his bed and was back working, taking inventory of boxed medical supplies in a storeroom. The short-haired kid, in blue-and-red-striped shirt and jeans and tennies, was moving awkwardly, holding himself stiff. It hurt his face when he got a smile through, but he was clearly glad to see me.
He perched on a carton, and I did the same. I asked if it was okay to smoke and he said it was, but turned down my offer of a Lucky.
He told me, "Dr. Sprague figured I might as well be hurting down here as in a bed."
"How'd you manage it?"
"Ah, I psyched him out. Told the doc I was getting stir-crazy, and said I would sue if I got bed sores." He shook his head. "I couldn't take it, man, those nurses are always fussing around with me. Gives me the jumps."
I grinned and shook my head. "You don't know when you've got it good."
He made a face. "I don't like older women."
"Why, how old are these hags?"
"Late twenties, early thirties, I guess—flirting and flitting around like a bunch of girls."
"Yeah," I said, letting smoke out around my grin, "that does sound like hell."
"I mean, they're nice enough, but what if you want to sleep or read or watch TV? They don't give a guy a minute's peace. Like with that cowboy actor, who got tossed off his horse at the Garden? Nonstop attention. You better not be some old guy with a hernia or some housewife with a broken ankle or something, when there's a man around here, under thirty, with a pulse."
"Sounds like sheer agony, kid."
"Or like when that Evello guy was in there. He wasn't even some good-looking actor. I mean, he's an old guy, fifty or something. But he's a celebrity, and of course that's how it goes in the celebrity suite."
I frowned at him. "Who are we talking about?"
"You mean, the actor?"
"No," I said. "I know who the actor is—Lance Vernon." I also knew those nurses wouldn't get very far with Lance. "You said ' Evello'—did you mean Junior Evello?"
"Yeah, yeah, Evello. Right name, Carlo Evello—old-style don, head of the sixth Family. Don't you know about him, Mr. Hammer, in your line of work?"
"Yeah, I do, but where do you come off?"
He laughed through his cracked lips. "Menial staff at a hospital doesn't exactly draw executive types, Mr. Hammer, and I work in the basement. Some of these neighborhood guys tell some pretty crazy stories. Sounds like Junior Evello's a real big shot in their backyards."