“A Gypsy?”
“Not this one. He’s a high-stepper, he is.”
“Thanks for the help,” Daniels said, walking briskly toward the door.
“Crackers are fifteen.”
Daniels went back, gave her a nickel and left.
“Back to headquarters,” he told Pete as he climbed into the car. He was tired, hadn’t slept for more than twenty-four hours, and he rested his head against the seat.
Pete shook him away. “Hey, Lieutenant, come out of it.”
Knuckling his eyes, Daniels crawled out of the car and dragged his feet up the stairs to his office. There was a note on his desk and he picked it up listlessly to read it. Suddenly he straightened in his chair.
King Georg phoned, the note read. Said the boy was lying. You can have him in twenty-four hours. You’d know where.
Daniels groaned. First, there would be a romano-kris; and, at the tribal court, Michael would be booted out of the tribe. After that, with no family loyalty or ties to protect him, he would really get the business. Daniels could see it now; the fancy knife work, the design carved into Michael’s olive skin. Later, the knife would press deeper still — and Michael, wanted by the police for murder, would become just another name on the list at the Missing Persons Bureau, never to come to trial.
Daniels stared blankly at his hands for a moment, then snatched up his hat and dashed out of the office and down to the basement. Pete was still there in the garage and Daniels shouted to him.
“Roll it out, son. King Georg’s.”
Pete asked no questions. He had the car in gear and was on his way out of the garage before Daniels could get the door closed.
“I’m a chump,” Daniels muttered. “This Michael kid.”
“Do we pull him in?”
“If that’s the only way we can save him. I hope to heaven we’re not too late.”
“Save him?” Pete asked in amazement.
Daniels nodded grimly. If the kid were to die, the responsibility for his death would rest squarely on Daniels’ shoulders. Hadn’t he encouraged the king to find the boy guilty of lying to his own tribe? And hadn’t he been the one to tell the king that if Michael were guilty of lying it stood to reason he was also guilty of murdering one of his own people?
“Above the wail of the siren,” Daniels shouted, “Did you ever hear of a Gypsy turning away from any money lying around loose? They work on the theory that if it isn’t nailed down it’s anybody’s property. But Sonya was found with forty dollars. Michael would have taken it if he had killed her.”
To Daniels’ mind, that meant the boy walked into the store and found her already dead. Terrified, he had rushed out of the place with no stops for looting. And another thing — now that the money had come into the picture, where had Sonya gotten forty dollars? At her rates, that would have meant a minimum of eighty customers, but the lady in the grocery store had said Sonya’s customers were few and far between.
And last, but by no means least, Gypsies were artists with the shiv. Then why a piece of pipe as the murder weapon? The nearest thing at hand? Daniels doubted that. A knife was always closer for a Gypsy.
Brakes and tires screaming, Pete swung the car into King Georg’s street and headed down the middle, scattering the cursing, fist-waving kids in all directions. He slammed to a stop and Daniels leaped out, butting his way across the crowded sidewalk. Hands tried to stop him as he mounted the steps but he shook them off like bothersome flies. Voices yelped at his heels, and other voices shouted a warning to someone up above him.
A man stepped in front of Daniels on the second landing, but Daniels, swinging wildly, rocked him back on his heels and drove him against the wall. Then Daniels ran on up the stairs.
He came to King Georg’s door and pounded on it. He heard a furtive movement inside but no one answered his rap. Moving back a bit, he hurled his hundred and eighty pounds at the frail door. It gave with a noisy wrench of metal hinges, spilling the detective into the room. He straightened quickly and looked around.
King Georg, arms folded across his chest, stood like a statue near the window, his black eyes blazing at Daniels. “We will handle this in our own way,” said the king harshly. His eyes moved to a cot in the corner.
Daniels strode to the cot and looked down into Michael’s face. The boy’s mouth had been battered to a raw gash, his nose was twisted sharply to the left, both his eyes were like eggplants, but there was no indication that a knife had been used on him — yet. The knife was next.
“Who did this to him?” Daniels asked.
The king laughed. “A taxi hit him.”
“He’s innocent,” Daniels said.
“He lied to me. He—”
“I know what he said,” Daniels interrupted, “and it’s a fact he was at her store, but he didn’t kill her. Michael,” Daniels said, leaning over the boy. “She was dead when you got there, wasn’t she?”
The boy nodded.
“And you know who killed her, don’t you?”
The young man’s eyes opened slowly to slits and, in a hoarse voice, he muttered, “No! No!”
Daniels let it pass for the moment. “Why did you and Sonya break up? I want the truth!”
“I... I met another g-girl.”
“You’re lying!” Daniels snapped.
“Let me talk to him,” said King Georg. He moved forward, his eyes hard.
Michael rose halfway from the cot, then fell back again. “The gambling,” he whispered. “I would collect the money down here and take it to Sonya’s store. She had a bowl. I would put the money in the bowl. Someone would come there later to collect it.”
“Sonya wasn’t in on it?” asked Daniels.
Michael shook his head. “When she found out, she was through with me. The day before yesterday she told me to give her what money I had collected. Taking bets from my people, you understand? She said she would confront the man with the money when he came for it. She said she would turn it over to the policeman on her street and make the policeman arrest this man.”
Michael was having trouble talking through his battered mouth and Daniels knew he wouldn’t be able to speak much longer. Hastily he said, “You know who killed her. You know this man’s name.”
“No, I know nothing!” Michael moaned. “Yesterday, I went to Sonya’s. I was worried. I thought the man might hurt her. I found her dead.”
“Who is he?”
“I don’t know.”
“You lie!” King Georg snapped. His fingers dug sharply into Michael’s arm. “Tell the truth, or—”
“But I don’t know. I never talked to him. I would leave the money at the same time every day, then leave. He would watch me from somewhere — I don’t know where — and pick up the money when I was gone. But yesterday, he came early. Only Sonya had talked to him — and she’s dead.”
The king spat in disgust in the boy’s face. “Stinking liar.”
“No,” Daniels said, turning away from Michael. “I think he’s told us all he knows. Why not? He wants to live. You’ll kill him if he lied.”
“He’d be better dead.” The king’s rage gave way to remorse. “If he has told us all he knows, Sonya’s murderer goes free.”
Daniels shook his head. “The bowl is still in her store. There should be fingerprints to be seen all over it.”
“Why are you waiting here, then?” King Georg demanded.
Daniels smiled mirthlessly. “You sure howl for action when your gang’s in the clear, don’t you?”
“Why else have a king?” King Georg replied.
In the squad car once again, Daniels stared gloomily out the window at the pageant of New York’s blinking, garish lights as Pete sped north. Somewhere in this great city there walked a man who had murdered an unimportant Gypsy girl; her death had meant no more to him than the swatting of a mosquito.