“Johnny? You know who this is?”
“Yeah.”
“Your girl on the board? Can I talk?”
“Go ahead, Joe. I was just gonna call you.”
“Something I should know?”
“You first.”
“All right. A couple of things occurred to me after you left.”
“That was only about ten hours ago. You got insomnia?”
“If I haven't, I will have. I'm beginning to get too much noise from downtown about three bodies and no action from me. I need a little diversion. Now you take this Frederick-”
“You take him.”
“Maybe I will. I need to take someone, and you seem to think he's the man.”
Johnny hesitated. “Or close. You can't prove it, though.”
“We didn't get around to it this afternoon, but you think he was the one behind the silencer in the kitchen that night?”
“He has keys.”
“So Jimmy told me. And of course it figures that he would. But assuming he was the man in the kitchen, you know what doesn't fit?”
“The telephone call.”
“That's right. His calling someone and resigning from a pigeon loft puts him in the office boy category on this detail, while everything else says he's a lot farther up the line. You said you had the drop on the switchboard, yet your girl in whom you seem to have a lot of confidence didn't catch his call. Which brings up a very interesting point: did he make it at all? Could he have foxed you?”
Johnny opened his mouth and closed it again. When he spoke his tone was thoughtful. “I had my big bazoo open to tell you that no one coulda known where I was listenin' in from, but maybe Freddie isn't the only one around here to do a little underestimating. It's a good point, Joe. I think I can find out without too much trouble. I'll call you back. In the meantime I got a little something for you down here, like the partner of the guy you talked to after the doc got palpitations.”
“He showed up again? What happened?”
“He blew into the lobby downstairs, snowed up like a blizzard. I got him on ice downstairs; send someone around with the net.”
“A pleasure. You think he was sent?”
“Not this time. I think he was plannin' on getting himself a hunk of even for the chair I slung at him this afternoon. From the looks of him nobody's said much of anything to him in the last couple of hours that's gotten through. He's makin' his own music. This was just a little sortie to kinda re-establish his own opinion of himself.”
“We'll want to talk to him when he unwinds.”
“I'm going out for a while, so tell whoever you send by to ask Paul for the key. And don't send any flyweights. I took the difference away from our redheaded friend, but I got a feeling the man in front of that door when it opens'll think Anzio was a high tea.”
“How'd you take him?”
“He didn't see me.”
“How unsporting of you.”
“Yeah. I'll call you back.”
“Call me back in the morning. I do sleep a few hours a night.”
“You'll never get to be a captain that way, Joe.”
He hung up the phone in the middle of the multisyllabic reply.
Chapter VIII
On the street Johnny looked for a cab, glanced up deserted 45th Street and turned right to walk up to Sixth Avenue. He wanted a cab going north.
Half a dozen doors up the street he took in the tall man standing in the doorway in a short-sleeved sports shirt and a colorfully banded panama, and he was almost past before it registered. He stopped. “Hans?” he asked a little doubtfully until he saw the face. “Damn, boy, I almost didn't recognize you, I'm so used to seein' you in whites all the time. Steppin' out?”
The first cook cleared his throat; he seemed uneasy. “Yes. That is … I have a date.”
“Happy hunting. How'd you make out with Freddie?”
This time the voice was bitter. “He will let me know. He needs to make up his mind, to consider the advisability of looking for someone with a name and more experience.”
“I wouldn't worry about it too much, Hans. You're puttin' in a good lick for yourself every day you keep the wheels turning. I doubt Freddie does much of any looking around.”
“The waiting, though … the indecision-”
“You're on the ground, Hans, and you got a runnin' start.”
“It is important to me.”
“Sure it is. Top jobs don't grow on trees. Well, I got to run, boy. See you tomorrow.” A cab turned the corner from Sixth and headed west toward Johnny, and he stepped out into the street and flagged it. He jerked the rear door open, and slid in, and they were riding by Hans and the hotel when the driver tipped the flag down.
On impulse Johnny leaned forward. “Circle the block. I want to come back through this block.”
“Mister,” the cabbie said in patient exposition as to a backward child, “you live around here? You know how these streets run? To come back down this street I got to go clear to Eighth, over to 46th, back to Fifth, over-”
“I didn't tell you how to do it, bud. I said do it.”
They hummed through the deserted streets, the cab rocketing around the right hand turns, catching all the lights. Johnny spoke as they crossed Sixth on 45th. “Slow it down.” His eyes had already seen that the single figure in the doorway had increased to two, and as the cab eased by he could see the horn rimmed glasses and the orange tinted hair above the flowered dress. Myrna. Myrna and Hans. Now there was a combination for you.
Johnny leaned back slowly in the corner of the cab. Hans and Myrna. Not even the rearing of sex's lovely head should explain that surprising alliance, although of course you never could tell…
The driver was looking back over his shoulder. “Well, mister? You like it well enough to do it again?”
Johnny roused himself. “Take me up to Van Cortland and Bacon.”
“Jesus, mister, that's way uptown. You must like to ride.”
“I like to ride but not to talk.”
“Okay, okay. The roof don't have to fall in on me. You want to go through the park or up the highway?”
“Through the park.”
They rode in silence for thirty five minutes, and the meter said $3.15 when the cab pulled in to a comer in an area of apartment houses with massive Gothic fronts. Johnny paid the driver off, and stood on the curb a moment. He had been here once before, but in the daylight. He looked up and down the narrow street with its tightly knit row of cars parked up and down the slight grade. Up, Johnny's sense of direction said, and he turned left and walked steadily, past successive ornate, identical buildings. He moved briskly. He wasn't sure what he was looking for, but he would know it when he saw it. And at the fifth apartment entrance he saw it: one of the couchant stone lions that formed the elaborate entrance pattern for each building had a chipped nose. Johnny had seen that chipped-nosed lion before.
He ran up the double flight of wide stone steps and entered the bare lobby, in which the impressive exterior quickly degenerated to a shabby gentility. He ran a finger down the list of names on the mail boxes, and stopped at Romero, Jerry. 301-C. It was a walkup, and he climbed the stairs, whistling tunelessly. On the first landing two panes of glass in the large window were broken out completely.
He could see movement behind the one-way glass in the door panel after his knock, and it was a moment before the door opened. “Come in, come in, Johnny,” Jerry Romero invited him. Jerry was a small man, running to flesh, balding, and with a two-day beard. He was dressed in an undershirt, trousers, and bedroom slippers. His wife, Rosa, stood behind him, self-consciously clutching a faded blue dressing gown about her thin body. She was a tired-looking woman, her hair up in curlers, her skin sallow, and her eyes anxious.
“Come in, Johnny,” she echoed. She led the way inside, trying to smile, her glance flickering between the two men. “You're in trouble, Jerry!” she accused her husband.