“It’s at six o’clock this afternoon, man! All set up! I can’t get another five before...”
Waldo’s movement to leave the sedan stopped the words. “Okay, okay,” Harrison James said vehemently. “I’ll see what I can do.”
“Where?” Waldo asked with a confident smile spreading across his face.
Harrison James rattled off an address and Waldo got out of the sedan. He was laughing quietly. There wasn’t any doubt in his mind. Harrison James would dig up another five thousand dollars in time.
He did.
Thursday afternoon went slowly for Waldo. His hands were busy with the new shipment of books but his thoughts were far from the automatic indexing and he didn’t even pay any particular attention when Harrison James came into the shop again and took down the special volume.
Waldo removed the additional five thousand dollars from the book absently.
Sonny Blue. Tobiah. You could hear stories about those two if you wanted to listen. And he had listened. Tobiah Andresco: underworld kingpin, the city’s biggest live mobster. Sonny Blue: young, maybe Myra’s age. Tobiah’s son? There was speculation, even though all of the records compiled on Tobiah Andresco failed to include a marriage or a blood beneficiary. You could guess, of course; somewhere along the line Tobiah had sired an offspring. Sure. Guess. It was your prerogative. But what did you know? Only that Tobiah Andresco and Sonny Blue were as close as any father-son relationship in existence might remotely hope to be.
“Aren’t you going to rest, father?”
Myra’s words chased the thoughts from Waldo’s mind and brought a gentle smile to his face. “Is it that time already, my dear?”
“Four-thirty.”
“All right. Yes, I think I will take few winks. Are you going out this evening? With Johnny?”
“Not until nine.”
“I like Johnny.”
His daughter’s grin was genuinely warm. “So do I, father?
Waldo nodded his approval of Johnny Simcox as he retired to the
small office, his private sanctuary, at the rear of the bookshop. Johnny Simcox had a sense of direction, a sense of value. He would be a good husband to Myra. And she, of course, would be a good wife to him.
Waldo closed the office door behind him and locked it.
Seconds later, he was a flurry of calculated and methodical motion. He took one of the records from a secreted slot under the ancient oak desk and put it on the player. The records were his prizes; they had required hours to make. Music filled the office. In moments there would be the sound of himself singing off key, then humming, then whistling, then the music recorded from a myriad of radio programs again. It would continue for three hours if necessary. Today it would not be necessary. He would complete his task in just slightly over two hours.
Lifting the tilted head rest of the worn leather couch against the far wall, he removed the self-designed copy of the Holy Bible, put on his coat and hat and stepped out the back door of the office into the alley.
Fifteen minutes later, the Bible locked securely under his arm, he was on the subway and going across town.
He arrived at the swanky East Side address Harrison James had given him at exactly three minutes to six. Entering the lobby of the apartment building, he rode a whispering self-service elevator up to the fourth floor and found the door he wanted. The corridor was empty. He placed a thumb against the door bell. Sweat prickled his body. His teeth came down on his lower lip. His palms were wet. But he felt incredibly alive as he adjusted the Bible in his hands. He pointed the carved-out open end of the book toward the door. His finger went into the slot on the bottom cover.
The door opened. And for just an instant an intense young man of medium construction, and nattily attired in a soft gray suit, appeared in the opening.
Then Waldo squeezed the trigger of the silenced 38 inside the Holy Bible.
Pffft.
Sonny Blue jerked up on his toes and seemed to hang in the door opening, his face caught in incredible surprise. Blood gushed from his heart through the hole in his chest, spattering the wall.
It was twenty minutes before seven o’clock in the evening when Waldo stepped through the alley door and into his office again. The record was playing. He heard himself humming a catchy little tune and he smiled. There was plenty of time, another full forty-five minutes of playing time if he had needed it.
He sat at his desk, cleaned the .38, and returned the Holy Bible to its slot under the head rest of the couch. Then he went to a tiny sink and washed his hands and face thoroughly. Finally he removed the record, secreted it, and walked into the bookshop.
The paunchy uniformed policeman at the bookshelf to his right produced an instant of anxiety before he realized that Bert Parker, beat patrolman, was only browsing.
Waldo had a pleasant smile for the patrolman and for Myra as she came to him. Myra’s eyes glistened with fondness. “Have a good rest, father?”
“Excellent.”
“Beats all how some people get away with things these days,” Bert Parker said from the bookshelf.
“That right?” Waldo asked, disguising the animalistic caution that was suddenly a bright flame inside him, bright but concealed.
“Yeah,” Barker said. “I’d like to see me sneak in some sack time while I’m on the job.”
His grin was wide.
Friday morning sparkled in its own crisp brilliance and there was a bouncy spring in Waldo’s step. He arrived at the bookshop at exactly ten o’clock, the same hour he had arrived every morning for the past twenty-four years. Taking the key from his pocket, he paused to smile benignly on the street and then he inserted the key in the door lock.
The wave of apprehension didn’t strike him until he was inside the shop and he heard himself whistling the gay tune. He became rooted, tight as a tympani, his eyes fixed on the closed door of his small office. The whistling sound came from behind that door.
Had he forgotten to put away the record the previous afternoon?
No!
He turned back to the street door soundlessly.
“Waldo?”
Panic swept through him like a blizzard wind.
“Are you leaving, Waldo? I wanted to see you.”
The voice was quiescent but the words knife into him. He felt like someone was repeatedly puncturing his body with a poniard, yet he was drawn around by an invisible force until he was looking on the mountainous man filling the open doorway of his office. Behind the man, the music from the record was louder.
Tobiah Andresco was expensively immaculate, the image of a man who had just stepped from a fashion advertisement. He probably was around sixty, but he looked an indolent forty. He stood there smiling carefully and looking very much at ease. Yet Waldo knew him for what he was, a megalomaniac with a mind as keen as a saber’s edge. And there was fear in Waldo now, a deep-seated fear that filled him with trepidation.
How had Tobiah entered the shop? It wasn’t important, really. The important thing was how did Tobiah know? The corridor had been empty. No one had seen Sonny Blue open the apartment door. No one had seen the look of incredulous surprise that had spread across his face as the bullet went into his heart. So how did Tobiah know...
“Coming in, Waldo?”
Tobiah Andresco stepped back out of the doorway and waited with the same patience of his constant companion, the large black labrador at his side.
Waldo was confused and badly shaken. His thoughts were jumbled. He didn’t remember going into the office, moving past the man who smelled subtly of pomade, but suddenly he was there, sitting rigidly on the edge of the worn couch while Tobiah seated himself behind the scarred oak desk and dropped his hand almost carelessly, it seemed, to the head of the black labrador.