I shrugged. "Maybe it isn't. And a guy like Jay Wren can pull strings from Miami easy enough. But somehow, with all that's been happening, it makes sense that he's been right here in the thick of it."
Pat's forehead tensed. "You think Wren's behind all of this? Not Evello?"
"I'm not sure. Evello has a smooth line, so it's hard to say. But I tend to believe the son of a bitch. And Wren is tied to Billy's attackers—Brix, Felton, and Haver."
Pat half climbed out of the chair, shaking a finger at me. "Speaking of Brix—goddamnit, I almost forgot, over this Evello thing.... What's the idea going over to Bellevue and scaring the shit out of my prisoner?"
"Why, are they short bedpans?"
"You go in half-cocked and hand that rookie on the door a load of crap about 'Captain Chambers,' when all you had to do was ask, and I'd have arranged it."
"Would you?"
"Well. Maybe." He gave me the RCA-Victor-dog head tilt. "So ... you get anything out of the creep?"
"He swears up and down that jumping Billy was strictly over the hospital supply-room pilferage dispute. Nothing bigger or more far-reaching than just trying to stave off this shortage on the street."
Pat shook his head. "Then why the hell these attempted hits on you, Mike? If all you did was break up a couple junkies ripping off a decent kid, why send Russell Frazer after you? Or those St. Louis boys?"
"That's what keeps me up nights." I sat up. "Look, Pat—about Wren."
"Yeah?"
"See what kind of surveillance photos the feds and Miami PD have on the Snowbird's recent recuperation visit."
"Why should I?"
"Because it gives me another thread."
"Are you making a sweater, or unraveling one?"
I grinned. "Do me the favor and find out."
"Fuck you, Mike. Really. I mean it. Fuck you, anyway."
"I love you, too, buddy. Now ... tell me the big news."
He frowned. "What?"
"How long have I known you?" I tapped the manila envelope. "You could have had this messengered over. Captains of Homicide don't play delivery boy. And you got the expression of a constipated billy goat. What's happened?"
His face turned blank. He dropped the phony theatrics, cut the comedy completely, and said, "Edwin Brooke."
"Guy who robbed and supposedly offed Russell Frazer. Right. What about him?"
Pat sighed. "He got a taste of his own medicine last night, and I don't mean cocaine—somebody shivved him in the shower at the Tombs."
I leaned forward. "What kind of condition is he in?"
"Cold," Pat said. "The kind of cold you get when they file you away in a drawer at the morgue."
"Shit," I said.
"You're trying to gather threads, but somebody else is going around picking them up and getting rid of 'em."
"Shit."
"You said that."
I frowned at him. "The shiv artist? In custody?"
Pat shook his head. "It's stir, Mike. Guys get shivved. And nobody rats."
"Shit."
"Some vocabulary you got."
Then I gave him a look that made him uncomfortable—the slit-eyed, half-smiling look that told him things would get worse before they got better.
"Mike..."
"What if there's somebody new on the scene, Pat? What if somebody is moving in on not just the Snowbird but Evello?"
Confusion lined his forehead. "Isn't the Snowbird moving in on Evello enough?"
"Should be. But what if there's another player in this game? Like two people are playing chess, then they get distracted and a third party slips in and makes a move that neither of them catches."
His eyes were tight. "Who?"
"Not sure, old buddy. Don't know."
"Don't hold out on me, Mike...."
"I'm not." I leaned back and pretended to change the subject. "Say, I haven't remembered to compliment you and your pals in Treasury."
"About what?"
"That solid police work you've been doing. These brilliant efforts you've made, working as a team, interdepartmental cooperation and all. Really cracking down on the illegal drugs, rolling up your sleeves and getting those streets dried up."
"Well, uh, thanks, I guess."
"In a pig's ass." I gave him the horse laugh. "Your entire effort is based on anonymous phone tips! You just go running after the leads some voice on the phone hands you...." And I tapped the envelope that bore the tape.
"I didn't deny we'd had phone tips, Mike."
"No. But you didn't tell me those tips were the whole megillah. Ever consider that somebody inside the organization—somebody trying to take over from Evello—might be playing you john laws like a kazoo?"
He didn't deny it, just asked, "Wren, maybe?"
"Maybe, but it sounds to me like the Snowbird and his people are suffering the street shortage right alongside Evello."
Pat chewed on that, then he plucked his hat off my desk and got to his feet. "It's a theory. I'll share it with Treasury."
"Do that."
The sound of Pat shutting the outer office door preceded Velda shutting the inner one. She was wearing a copper-colored silk blouse and a darker brown tight skirt that ended just above her knees.
She came over and sat on the edge of my desk. When she did that, crossing her bare legs, I wanted to get up, use an arm to sweep everything but her off the desk, and hike that skirt up and take her right there.
But I was just too damn professional for that.
"Sounds like things got a little heated," Velda said.
"You know Pat. Whenever I'm doing most of his work for him, he starts making noise like a ruptured walrus, thinking nobody will notice he's a washout."
She picked up the envelope with the plastic spool in it. "This is the tipster tape? I'll get it over to Vincent Rector. Messenger okay, or hand-delivered?"
"Hand-deliver it, doll. Take your .32."
She nodded. "Pat had a funny look, going in. And a funny look, going out, now that I think of it. What's up?"
"Edwin Brooke got stuck in the showers at the Tombs."
"Like that's news."
"I'm talking about with a knife, kitten."
"Oh." Her eyes went big. "Somebody's cleaning up."
"That's what you do in the shower. Anything on the Vought dame?"
She nodded. "Shirley Vought did have rich parents. Her father was Mr. Vought Chemical, and she was an only child. So she should have inherited big-time."
"Should have?"
"May have." Velda shrugged. "It's not public knowledge, how much she wound up with."
"Or didn't wind up with?"
"Or didn't."
I grunted. "Why wouldn't she have?"
Velda shrugged and nice things happened with her hair and breasts. "She had a rather public falling-out with her father about five years ago, couple years before his death. Seems she dropped out of college in the first year, and she was a regular wild child—attracted to dangerous men, I gather."
"You don't mean mob guys?"
"No! Celebrity types—actors, rock musicians, some of the jet-set party boys, too. Making the Manhattan club scene, up all night drinking and dancing. Could just be a girl feeling her oats. You know about feeling your oats, Mike, right?"
I didn't take the bait. "So can we confirm whether she's independently wealthy, as she says?"
She raised both eyebrows. "Well, I have a line in to a P.I. agency we've worked with a couple times—one that deals with financial stuff ... the kind of bank-records research that verges on industrial espionage, which isn't usually our bag. It's expensive, Mike. Could cost a couple grand, and we don't have a client."
"Sure we do, sugar."
"Yeah, who?"
"Me. I hired us to find out why so many people want me dead."