"No, certainly not. You don't care, do you, Billy?"
"Go ahead. Bring her back," he told Leo. "We was talking."
She smiled at the four of us, got down off the stool and walked away. Billy wasn't looking at me when he said, "You better stay home nights from now on, wise guy."
I didn't look at him either. I kept watching Velda passing through the crowd. I said, "Any time, any place," and left them there together. A waiter came by with a tray, offered me a drink and I picked one up. It was a lousy drink but I threw it down anyway.
People kept saying, hello just to be polite and I said hello back. I picked Michael out of the crowd and saw that she was looking around for me too. Just as I started toward her I heard a whispered, "Mike!"
I stood there, took another drink from a passing waiter and sipped it. Velda said, "Meet me on the corner in an hour. The drugstore."
It was enough. I walked off, waved to Michael and waited while she made excuses to her friends.
Her smile looked tired, her face worried, but she swung across the room and held her hands out to me. "Enjoying yourself?"
"Oh, somewhat."
"I saw you talking to my brother."
"And friends. He sure has great friends."
"Is everything... all right?"
"For now."
She sucked her lip between her teeth and frowned. "Take me home, Mike."
"Not tonight, kid." Her face came up, hurt. "I've been read off," I said. "I'm unhealthier than ever to be seen with. When it happens I don't want you around."
"Carl?"
"He's part of it."
"And you think I am too."
"Michael, you're a nice kid. You're lovely as hell and you have everything to go with it. If you're trying to get something across to me I don't get it. Even if I did I wouldn't trust you a bit. I could go crazy nuts about you but I still wouldn't trust you. I told you a word the last time I saw you. It was Mafia. It's a word you don't speak right out because it means trouble. It's a word that has all the conniving and murder in the world behind it and as long as it touches you I'm not trusting you."
"You... didn't feel that way... when you kissed me."
There was no answer to it. I ran my hand along her cheek and squeezed her ear while I grinned at her. "A lot of things don't make much sense. They just happen."
"Will I see you again?"
"Maybe."
She walked to the door with me, said good-bye and let her tongue run over her mouth slowly like she was enjoying the taste of something. I grabbed my hat and got out of there fast before she talked me into something I wasn't going to get talked into.
The two goons were still outside. There was something set in their faces and they didn't move when I went past them. When the elevator came up I stepped in, hit the button marked B and had a smoke on the way down. The door opened, I hit the mainfloor buzzer as I got out and the elevator went back up a floor.
It wasn't hard to get out of there the back way. I went past the furnaces, angled around closed storerooms and found the door. There was a concrete yard in back bordered by a fence with a door that swung into the same arrangement on the other side. This time I met a young kid firing one of the furnaces, held out a bill as I went by and said, "Dames. You know how it is." He nodded wisely, speared the bill and went back to his work whistling.
I found the drugstore and went in for a soda. They sold magazines up front so I brought one back with me while I waited. It was five minutes past the hour when Velda came in, saw me and slipped into the booth.
"You get around, Mike."
"I was thinking of saying the same to you. How come you tangled with Mist?"
"Later. Now listen, I haven't too much time. Earlier this evening
two names came up. One of Carl's men turned in a report and
I was close enough to hear it. The report was that somebody had double-checked on Nicholas Raymond and Walter McGrath. Carl got all excited about it.
"At the time I was talking to Al and Billy and had my back to Carl. He sent the guy off, called Billy off and I could tell from Billy's face that he passed the news on to him. He looked like a dead fish when he came back to the bar with us. He was so mad his hands were shaking."
I said, "Did Affia get the news?"
"Most likely. I excused myself for a few minutes to give him a chance to pass it politely."
"I wonder about something, Kitten."
"What?"
"I made a few phone calls."
"It sounded more important than that."
"Maybe Washington is getting hot.
"They'll have to get hotter," Velda grinned. "Billy said he had to talk a little business tonight." She reached in her handbag and brought out something. "He gave me a key to his apartment and told me to go ahead up and wait for him there."
I whistled between my teeth and picked the key out of her fingers. "Let's go then. This is hot."
"Not me, Mike. You go." There was a deadly seriousness about her face.
"What's the rest of it, Velda?"
"This is a duplicate key I dragged Carlo Barnes out of bed to make up for me. It took some fast and fancy working to get it so quickly."
"Yeah."
"Al Affia caught the pitch and invited me up to his place for awhile before I went to Billy's," Velda said softly.
"The lousy little..."
"Don't worry about it, Mike."
"I'm not. I'm just going to smash his face in for him, that's all." I sat there with my hands making fists and the hate pumping through my veins so hard it hurt.
Velda squeezed my hand and dumped a small aspirin bottle out of her bag and showed it to me. There weren't any pills in it, only a white powder. "Chloral," she said. "Don't worry."
I didn't like it. I knew what she figured to do and I didn't go for the play. "He's no tourist. They guy's been around."
"He's still a man."
My mouth felt dry. "He's a cagey guy."
Her elbow nudged her side meaningly. "I still have that, Mike." You have to do things you don't want to do sometimes. You
hate yourself for it but you still have to do it. I nodded, said,
"Where's his place?"
"Not Brooklyn. He has a special little apartment under the name of Tony Todd on Forty-seventh between Eighth and Ninth Avenues." She pulled a note pad out, jotted down the number with the phone to go with it and handed it over. "Just in case, Mike."
I looked at it, memorized every detail there, then let the flame of my lighter wipe it out of existence. My beautiful, sleek animal was smiling at me, her eyes full of excitement and when you looked hard you could see the same thing there that you could see in mine. She stood up, winked and said, "Good hunting, Mike."
Then she was gone.
I gave her five minutes. I followed the shadows further uptown along the Drive to the building Billy Mist owned.
For the first time I was glad he was such a big man. He was so damn big he didn't have to stake anybody out around his place. He could relax in the luxury of security, knowing that just one word could bring in an army if anybody tried to take the first step across the line.
It was another one of those things that came easy. You go in like you belonged there. You get on the elevator and nobody notices. You get off and go down the hall, then stick the key in the lock and the door opens. You get treated to the best that money can buy even if the taste is crummy.
There were eight rooms in all. They were spotlessly clean and treated with all the care a well-paid maid could give them. I took forty-five minutes going through seven of them without finding one thing worth looking at until I came to the eighth.
It was a little room off the living room. At one time it must have been intended for a storeroom, but now it had a TV set, a tilt-back chair with an ottoman in place facing it, a desk and a bookcase loaded with pulps. Out of eight rooms here was the place where Billy Mist spent his solo time.