"I'm looking for Smit," I told her. "There's money in it for him."
She laughed, spoke almost without moving her narrow lips. "What's he gotta do?"
"I'll talk to Smit about that."
"He ain't here anyway." The door closed.
I turned to walk down the graffiti-scrawled hall to the exit. A round peace symbol in fresh red paint had been brushed awkwardly over the door by somebody who hadn't heard we'd pulled out.
"You, Mister!"
My head jerked around to look behind me. A skinny, pinch-faced man in dark pants and a too-small sweater stood just outside the door the girl had closed. I waited and he walked toward me with that skinny man's ginger lightness in his step. He had protuberant dark eyes, curious despite fear.
"I'm Smit," he said.
"Nudger." I held out my hand and he shook it.
"So what do you want to talk to me about?"
As he spoke he was walking ahead of me, his head half turned, like a dog leading its master. He stopped when we were in the vestibule, where there was sunlight, cracked plaster and complete privacy.
"Congram," I said. "I'm not police and I'll pay."
I watched him think about it. The flesh of his slender face was mottled as he moved in a nervous little dance in the dust-swirled sunlight. From certain angles he was thirty-five, from others, fifty.
"Why do you want the information?" he asked and gnawed his lower lip as if he had something against it.
"Private matter."
Smit grinned and shook his head. I was aware of his gaunt hands, unafraid of him because of his slight-ness-as long as he didn't reach for a weapon.
"We're talking about a hundred dollars," I said.
The grin stretched, giving his face a cadaverous look. "Haven't you heard of the code of the underworld?"
"Two hundred dollars," I said, knowing Carlon would consider that cheap.
Smit's yellow grin contracted to a thin line, and he fondled a dimple on the point of his chin with a dirty forefinger.
"I can always say you talked anyway," I told him.
His face contorted as if he'd been stabbed. "Hey, Nudger, you wouldn't do that!" He began his nervous shuffle again.
"No," I said, "I wouldn't."
His nervous body was still. He'd come to a decision. "All right. It don't matter by now."
I placed a pair of hundred dollar bills in his skeletal, stained hands.
"How do I know this'll spend?" he asked, holding up the bills to the sunlight.
"How do I know you're going to tell me the truth?"
"Because I'm not going to tell you anything you can hang on Jerry. I don't know of anything."
Smit had already supplied me with a first name. I stood and waited for what else he had to say.
He nervously twisted the two bills into a cigarette-size roll and slipped them into his pocket. "I met Jerry at the Poptop Club, right after I got off on a possession charge. I guess that's how he found out about me and wanted to use me for an in on his business deal."
"Business deal?"
"This was over a year ago, understand. It can't do no harm to tell now, or I wouldn't be telling it. Jerry wanted to buy into the middle of a connection; I don't exactly understand how. I think he was going to supply the capital to buy from the big dealer for a percentage of everything right down the line."
"How about some names?"
His eyes seem to contract in their sockets. "That I don't tell you, for any price. What I will say is that the' operation no longer exists. It hasn't for almost a year. The law made some key busts and somebody knew when to quit. At least that's what I was told."
"Did you set it up for Congram to talk to the people involved?"
"Sure," Smit said with a hint of pride, "that I could do. But they turned Jerry down."
"For what reason?"
"They had no way to trust him. And it didn't help him being so clean-cut straight-city, hair above his ears and all that."
I waited for Smit to continue, there in the syrupy sunlight of the vestibule. A few cars passed outside, beyond the door's cracked glass, and in the distance a truck's air horn sounded three long notes. Smit crossed his arms over his sunken chest, squeezing in on himself nervously. He saw I wasn't satisfied.
"I was told you could be trusted," I said. He wondered who might have told me, and I wasn't about to tell him.
"Jerry tried to talk them into a deal," Smit said, "but they refused, and he finally gave up and forgot the idea. I ain't seen him since-almost a year…"
"You brought Congram to the operation's attention," I said. "Didn't they ever ask you about him?"
"Sure. I told them what I told you. It was good enough."
I breathed out, loudly. "I'd have wanted to know more if I'd been them."
He uncrossed his arms and flexed his fingers, but he didn't go into his dance. "Okay," he said, "they wanted to know where he lived, so once they had me follow him when he left the Poptop."
"Where did he lead you?"
"Hey, I don't remember the address! It's been a year!"
I drew another hundred of Carlon's money from my wallet.
"I'll have to take you there," Smit said, snapping the bill from my hand. "Money is the root of all evil, you know?"
"I'm not in any position to argue with you."
I drove the rental while Smit gave me directions, pointing the way with a lean and dirty-nailed finger. He sat leaning forward, pulled by his eagerness to be done with the unpleasantness of our agreement.
We didn't have to travel far, only out of the depressing, blighted area of the city and through the marginal neighborhoods that marked the boundary. I pulled to the curb where Smit told me to, and he pointed to a tall apartment building that had had a recent face-lift, up to the third floor only. EXECUTIVE TOWERS, a block-lettered sign proclaimed, a bit too grandly for the condition of the building.
"Which apartment?" I asked.
"I don't know," Smit said with almost desperate sincerity. "Only the building… They had me follow him to the building, is all."
"What does Congram look like?" I asked.
"Hard to describe. Average height, build, nice-looking, nothing unusual about him except he's a great dresser. But there's something to him that tells you he's sharp."
"What color eyes?"
"Blue. His hair's dark and curly, cut short."
When there was a break in the traffic, I made a U-turn and drove Smit back to his own neighborhood and whatever his three hundred would buy. As he got out of the car, I assured him that our conversation would be kept confidential, but he knew there was no such thing and had the money in his pocket to prove it. He would worry for weeks, maybe months, in the shabby room where he lived with the thin, sad girl and whoever else slept there. Maybe he'd worry about our conversation for the rest of his life, as part of his collective worry. Some world.
I drove back to the Executive Towers.
The lobby of the face-lifted apartment building had also been remodeled recently. The walls seemed to be freshly painted, and the few cigarette butts and scuff marks were like a sacrilege on the gleaming red-and-white tile floor. I walked to the bank of brass mailboxes and scanned the name plates. No Congram. I pressed the button lettered MANAGER.
After a short wait I head a door open around a corner, and I walked toward the sound.
The manager's name was Toggins. He was a barrel-chested man wearing a leisure jacket and shirt open at the collar to reveal reddish hair that seemed to grope to reach his neck. He could have used that much hair on his head, bald but for some reddish strands combed sideways, like pencil lines, over his crown.