“You know him better than I do,” Fuentes said, and got to his feet. He glanced at Craddock, then fixed his gaze on me. “I’ll be in touch.”
“I’m sure you will.”
“Count on it. See you, Harry.”
Craddock gestured but didn’t answer. When Fuentes was gone, he took his time lighting one of the plastic-mouthpiece cigarillos he favored. The no-smoking-in-public-places law didn’t seem to be in force here in the bosom of the law, any more than it was in O’Key’s saloon.
He said through a gout of smoke, “Fuentes doesn’t seem to like you much.”
“I noticed.”
“By-the-book type. Ex-military. Keeps his ass clenched so tight he could crack nuts between his cheeks.”
“He has no cause to want to crack mine.”
“What I figured. Cooperating, like you said.”
“Like I said. Haven’t I always?”
“With me you have. So if you turned up some definite information on the Cohalan homicide, just happened to stumble across it, say, you’d let me know.”
“Before I even thought about contacting Fuentes.”
Craddock grinned a little. He understood what was going on with me, all right. He had qualities of empathy, humanity, insight that had been short-supplied to the good lieutenant. “I asked him for a copy of your Cohalan file. Said he’d get me one, but I got a feeling he’ll make me wait for it.”
“I can give you the gist of it right now. And put a copy in your hands first thing tomorrow morning.”
“Tomorrow’s soon enough. I got plenty of other open cases to keep me busy today.” Craddock picked up his cup, sipped from it, pulled a face that said the coffee had gotten cold. He frowned at the cup, frowned at his cigarillo. “I hate working Sundays,” he said.
“Everybody does. Not much choice, sometimes.”
“Yeah. Well, suppose you slide on outta here, and we’ll both get on with it.”
A different guy was manning the counter at Veterans’ Gym — musclebound, tight-mouthed, and bored. When I asked if Zeke Mayjack was around, he jerked a thumb toward the main gym entrance without even looking at me. I said, “Okay to go in?” and he scowled and jerked the thumb again. The owners of the Veterans’ seemed to have a knack for hiring the personality challenged.
Late Sunday morning appeared to be a slow time here. Of the seven people I counted in the gym, only three were getting exercise — a grunting welterweight giving the big bag a workout and two light-heavies in headgear and sweats thumping each other in the ring. A tired-looking fat man leaned against the ropes in one corner, issuing instructions in a monotone that the sluggers paid no attention to. A pair of hard-eyed characters was hanging close outside the ring, giving more heed to each other than to the sparring partners. Beyond where they stood, a grizzled old man sat on a three-legged stool, yelling sporadic advice to one of the sluggers who also ignored him. His raised voice and the smack of leather against flesh had an echolike effect in the cavernous enclosure.
I made a guess and approached the hard-eyed pair. Wrong guess. One of them said, “Mayjack? That’s him on the stool over there.”
Zeke Mayjack was not what I’d expected in more ways than one. Mid-seventies, sparse white hair like a curly skullcap, of indeterminate race: he might have been white, or mixed blood, or a fair-skinned African American. Probably a light-heavy in his days, like the pair in the ring, and not a very good one judging from his bent, flattened, lumpy features. One eye had gone milky with cataracts — blind, or close to it. The other had the shiny stare common to scramble-brained ex-pugs who’ve taken too many hard blows above the neck.
“Keep your head down, baby,” he was hollering as I walked up. “Down, man, down, goddamn it.”
“Zeke Mayjack, right?” I said. “Talk to you for a minute?”
The one good eye shifted my way, slid over the marks on my face. A cackling sound that had a hitch and a hiss in it came out of him. “Man, you shoulda kept your head down, too. Cut you up if you don’t.”
I let that pass and told him my name. That was as far as I got.
“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, I been waiting on you. He says he don’t want to see you, he don’t have nothing to say to you.”
“Who doesn’t want to see me?”
“Hey, who else? Jackie.”
“Jackie Spoons?”
“You know some other Jackie, honey boy?”
“How’d he know I want to talk to him?”
“He knows. Yeah, he knows everything,” The cackle again. “He’s like Sanny Claus.”
Sanny Claus. Christ. “Why won’t he talk to me?”
“Jackie, he says tell you you’re barkin’ up the wrong tree. He says he don’t know a fuckin’ thing about it.”
“About what?”
Shrug.
“Jay Cohalan? Carolyn Dain?”
Shrug. The one good eye wandered ringward. “Get that left up, for cry sake. C’mon, Frankie, you punk, jab. Yeah, that’s the way. Jab, jab, head down, jab.”
“What else did Jackie say?”
“Huh?”
“What else did he say to tell me?”
“Oh, yeah. Don’t hassle him if you know what’s good for you. Stay away from him if you know what’s good for you. Better do what he says. Cut you up a lot worse if you get Jackie pissed off. Lot worse, man,”
“Is that all?”
“All?”
“His message. That all of it?”
“Yeah.” The good eye blinked; the blind one stared glassily from under a lid enlarged by scar tissue. “No, it ain’t. Jackie says go talk to that fuckin’ Aussie.”
“What Aussie?”
Shrug.
“Dingo? That who he meant?”
“Yeah, him. Jackie don’t like him, honey boy.”
“Why doesn’t Jackie like him?”
Shrug.
“He do something to Jackie?”
“Nah. Nobody does nothing to Jackie.”
“What’s he look like?”
“Who? Jackie?”
“Dingo. The Aussie.”
“Yeah, what about him?”
“What does he look like? Big, bald, bushy eyebrows?”
“I don’t know him, baby,” Mayjack said.
“You mean you’ve never seen him?”
“Nah. He don’t come around here.”
“What’s his real name? Dingo’s real name?”
Shrug.
“I can’t go talk to him if I don’t know where to find him. Come on, Zeke, you must have some idea—”
“Hey, hey, man, my friends call me Zeke and you ain’t my friend. I don’t know you. You call me Mr. Mayjack.”
“Where do I look for Dingo, Mr. Mayjack?”
Shrug. Then, explosively, “Goddamn it! Shit!” as a flurry of loud smacks came from the ring, and one of the light-heavies bounced on the canvas. “I told you head down, left up, up. Smart-ass young punk, why don’t you listen?”
“I’m listening,” I said.
“Huh?”
“Dingo, Mr. Mayjack.”
“Jackie don’t like that fuckin’ Aussie. That’s what he said. I don’t like that fuckin’ Aussie, Zeke, he said.”
“They in the same business? Is that why Jackie doesn’t like him?”
Mayjack’s face clouded; his mouth pinched in at the corners. “Don’t ask me about that, honey boy. Boxing’s my business. Yeah. Jackie’s business is his business.”
“Where can I find Dingo?”
Shrug.
“What’s Dingo’s real name?”
“Pussy!” Mayjack yelled at the ring, where the one slugger was still down, and the fat man was now bending over him. “Get up, Frankie. Get him up, honey boy, get that pussy on his feet.”
Hopeless. I could stand here and hammer the same questions for an hour and I’d get nothing more out of Mayjack’s scrambled head than what he’d been programmed to deliver.