Who was I kidding? I didn't know what the question was—though I was pretty sure it had something to do with why bringing in guns from St. Louis to kill Mike Hammer was a good business move.
For somebody.
Chapter Seven
FROM A WINDOW BOOTH at Marco's Bar and Grill, I watched Velda get out of the cab, those long sleek legs unmistakably announcing her. She was in a cream-colored silk blouse and a dark brown tight skirt, simple fare that she made sexier than a bikini on any other woman.
She strode in, purse tucked under her arm, and I came up to take her elbow and guide her to a back booth, where we ordered a couple of drinks. She glanced around the place, taking in the lone hardhat gouging his way into a huge hero sandwich, determined to finish it on a ten-minute break, and the pair of gay lovers nuzzling at the bar. The counterman was watching a late-afternoon soap opera, ignoring the real thing a few feet away.
Velda shoved a sealed envelope at me after the drinks came, and held a match up to my cigarette.
"This far uptown," she said, "you're as out of place as a Van Gogh on Coney Island."
"Says who?" I said. "I've seen plenty of guys with one ear out there." I ripped open the flap and shook out the file cards with the photos stapled to them. "Have any trouble getting the stuff?"
"Nope. Bud Tiller is still paying back for the help you gave him with the Hanley case."
"I thought I owed him one."
"Maybe, but that Hanley deal would've cost him his license, if you hadn't waded in." Her dark eyes were reassuring. "Being an ex-FBI type, Bud's contacts are solid."
I was looking at mug shots of the hit men who'd tried to take me out in my apartment-building lobby.
She said, "Even the papers haven't got those."
The pair of police photos had been taken over ten years ago. Despite the occasion, both faces had an expression of unconcealed arrogance. Louis "Frenchy" Tallman had been booked on attempted assault, the case later dismissed because the victim refused to press charges, and Gerald Kopf on car theft. Kopf was convicted, sentenced, but put on probation for a year because it was his first offense. No other charges were registered, although the two were rumored to be open for contract kills, and had been questioned several times about various murders in several states.
"What interests me most," Velda said, "is their background."
"Yeah. Me, too."
They were originally New York boys—specifically, Brooklynites. They'd met in reform school and, although that part of their package was sealed, the name of the street gang they'd been in was mentioned.
"The Jackers," I said. "Short for 'hijackers'—those kids were the farm team for the Evello mob."
"So we have an interesting connection, despite the out-of-town tag."
I moved on to the other photos.
The pic of Russell Frazer was taken on a slab in the morgue, and he looked like he was asleep. Well, he was—he just wasn't waking up.
The one of the guy who had supposedly knifed Frazer had been grabbed by a newspaper photog and showed a surly, half-bald joker getting hauled out of a hotel entrance by a couple of uniformed cops. Behind him was a sullen whore with a boxer's nose, a delicate flower with twenty-eight previous arrests going for her. This was the first New York bust for the guy—or maybe I should say fall guy—who was registered at the Stearman Hotel as Edwin Brooke.
I let my eyes run over the picture again, picking up the background. "Isn't this Broadway?" I asked her.
"The Stearman Hotel is next to that cafeteria where all the junkies hang out."
I frowned. "Hell, that's two blocks from the Avondale, where Frazer lived in his salad days."
Velda nodded, then caught up with me and said, "You think Brooke might have known Russell Frazer?"
"It's the same neighborhood."
She made a face—on her, it looked good. "Every building's a neighborhood in that area. There's at least twenty flophouses calling themselves hotels within six blocks. Besides, Frazer moved out of the Avondale a long time ago."
"It stinks," I said.
"Sure it does," Velda told me. "And it won't smell any better until you stop horsing around fighting windmills."
"Why would I want to stop, with a Sancho Panza that has your shape?"
I tore the photos off the file cards and stuck them in my pocket, letting Velda put the rest back in her handbag. I took a sip of the watered drink, grimaced and put it down. "How about the other thing?"
She reached over and flicked the ash of my cigarette off with a fingernail. "Your friend Tiller says not to quote him, but there's talk of promotions going around the narco squad."
"Oh?"
"The D.A.'s office is filled with people sporting shit-eating grins, and Washington has sent up two top men from the Treasury Department to confer with the NYPD inspector who handled all the recent narcotics busts."
"Pat claims both local and federal agencies have put a big dent in the traffic. How big a one, I wonder?"
"Big enough for the Syndicate's Commission to call for a general meeting—the six New York families and factions from all over America and Europe, too."
"You're kidding."
"No. Biggest one since Appalachia in '57. Inside sources say one is due and there's going to be some head-rolling."
I grinned at her. "Pussycat, you are just bursting with news."
"Naw—Bud Tiller was just playing secret agent again, trying to impress you. Maybe he thinks you need a partner."
"I already have one, kitten."
She paused, let out a warm chuckle, and said, "Getting back to business—the law-enforcement agencies, federal and local, are keeping all this under wraps, officially, anyway."
I gaped at her. "Why aren't they bragging?"
Her expression grew sly and even more catlike than usual. "Nobody seems to want to mention the fact that it wasn't superior police investigation that put such a kink in the Syndicate's drug operation."
When she paused, I said, "Do I make a wild guess?"
"Try it."
"I dunno. Anonymous phone calls?"
"You joking?"
"You aren't laughing."
Her forehead frowned and her mouth smiled. "How the hell can you always be so damn right, then?"
I could feel the scowl start between my eyes and run down into my fingertips. "Are you joking now? These arrests are due to anonymous damn tips?"
"No joke. The various agencies got calls that stated places and times, and they would have dismissed the first one as a gag if it hadn't been so accurately detailed. It was too big not to follow up ... and everything proved out."
I gave a low whistle. "Somebody's spilling from the inside, all right. And that kind of a leak will get plugged up in a hurry."
"Right. Which is why the feds and the cops aren't taking public bows—their success story could be all too temporary."
"It may explain all the attention I'm getting from Assistant D.A. Traynor."
An eyebrow arched. "There's something else, Mike."
"Like what?"
"After the first call? The other calls were taped."
"Then they have a voiceprint of their tipster!"
But she shook her head. "The lab boys tried taking a voiceprint, but everything came out scrambled. It would be impossible to identify the caller from those tapes ... even if they knew who it was."
"Shit," I said.
"That's your comment? 'Shit'?"
I thought about it. "So now we have an electronics expert figure it out," I told her. "For us."
"Who's better than the federal people?"
"Remember Vincent Rector?"
Her eyes widened. Of course she remembered Vincent Rector—the electronics genius who had revolutionized the hi-fi industry and developed the first videotape. Who had semi-retired to happy puttering only to have his young wife try to frame him for a divorce action. I'd put aside my usual prejudice against divorce cases, and proved that Rector had been drugged and photos of him with a hooker staged, and also got my own shots of the wife in bed with the photographer.