The desk was locked, but it didn't take more than a minute to get it open. Right in the middle section was a dimestore scrapbook fat with clippings and photos and he was in all of them. My greasy little friend was one hell of an egotist from the looks of the thumbmarks on the pages.
Another ten minutes went by going through the book and then I came to Berga's picture. There was no caption. It was just a rotogravure cutout and Billy was grinning at the camera. Berga was supposed to be background but she outsmiled Billy. Two pages later she came up again only this time she was with Carl Evello and it was Billy who was in the background talking to somebody hidden by Carl's back. I found two more like that, first with Billy, then with Carl, and topping it all was a close-up glossy of Berga at her best with "love to my Handsome Man" penned in white across the bottom.
Nothing else unless you wanted to count the medicine bottles in the pigeonholes. It looked like the cabinet in the bathroom. Billy must have had a pretty nervous stomach.
I closed the desk, locked it and wiped it clean. I went back to the living room, checked my watch and knew the time was getting close. I picked up the phone and dialed Pat's home number. Nobody answered so I called headquarters and that's where he was. It was a tired, disgusted Pat that said hello.
"Busy, Pat?"
"Yeah, up to my ears. Where have you been? I've been calling between your office and your house all night."
"If I told you you'd never believe it. What's up?"
"Plenty. Sugar Smallhouse talked."
I could feel the chills crawl up my legs until the hairs on the backs of my hands stood straight out.
"Give, Pat. What's the score?"
He lowered his voice deliberately and didn't sound like himself at all. "Sugar was on the deal when Berga got bumped. Charlie Max was called in on the job but didn't make it."
"Come on, come on. Who did he finger?"
"He didn't. The other faces were all new to him."
"Damn it," I exploded, "can't you get something out of him?"
"Not any more, pal. Nobody can. They were taking the two downtown to the D.A.'s and somebody chopped them."
"What're you talking about?"
"Sugar and Charlie are dead. One federal man and one city cop are shot up pretty bad. They were sprayed by a tommy gun from the back seat of a passing car."
"Capone stuff. Hell, this isn't prohibition. For Pete's sake. Pat, how big are these guys? How far can they go?"
"Pretty far, it looks like. Sugar gave us one hot lead to a person with a Miami residence. He's big, too."
I could taste something sour in my mouth. "Yeah," I said, "so now he'll be asked polite questions and whatever answers he gives will satisfy them. I'd like to talk to the guy. Just him and me and a leather-covered sap. I'd love to hear his answers."
"It doesn't work that way, Mike."
"For me it does. Any trace of the car?"
"Sure, we found it." He sounded very tired. "A stolen job and the gun was still in it. We traced it to a group heisted from an armory in Illinois. No prints. Nothing. The lab is working on other things."
"Great. A year from now we'll get the report. I'd like to do it my way."
"That's why I was calling you."
"Now what."
"That screwball play of yours with Sugar and Max. The feds are pretty sore about it."
"You know what to tell them," I said.
"I did. They don't want to waste time pulling you out of jams."
"Why, those apple heads! Who are they supposed to be kidding? They must have had a tail on me all night to run me down in that joint and they sure waited until it was finished before they came in to get their suits dirty."
"Mike..."
"Nuts to them, brother. They can stick their heads..."
"Shut, up for a minute, will you!" Pat's voice was a low growl. "You didn't have a tail... those two hoods did. They lost the boys and didn't get picked up again until they reached Long
John's."
"So what?"
"So they needed a charge to drag them in on. The boys caught the tail, ditched their rods someplace and when one of our plainclothesmen braced them they were clean. They had a second tail and didn't know it, but they didn't take any chances and pulled some pretty fancy footwork just in case. If they could have been pulled in on a Sullivan rap we would have squeezed something out of them. You didn't leave them in condition to talk."
"Tell em thanks," I grunted. "I don't like to be gunned for. I'll try not to break up their next play."
"Yeah," Pat said sourly.
"Anything on Carver yet?" I asked him.
"Not a thing. We have two freshly killed blondes, more or less. One's been in the river at least three days and the other was shot by an irate lover just tonight. They interest you?"
"Quit being funny." I looked at my watch. Time was getting too damn short. I said, "I'll buzz you if anything turns up, otherwise I'll see you in the morning."
"Okay. Where are you now?"
"In the apartment of a guy named Billy Mist and he's due in any second."
His breath made a sharp hissing sound over the phone as I hung up. I had almost timed it too close. The elevator marker was climbing toward the floor when I reached it and just in case I stepped around the corner of the stairs, went up to the first landing and waited.
Billy Mist and a heavyset muscleman came off the elevator, opened the apartment door and went in. There wasn't anything I wanted to talk to him about so I took the stairs back down instead of the elevator and got out the front door in one piece.
I got halfway down the block when some elusive little thing flashed across my mind and my eyes twisted into a squint as I tried to catch it. Something little. Something trivial. Something in the apartment I should have noticed and didn't. Something that screamed out to be seen and I had passed it by. I tried to bring it into focus and it wouldn't come and after a minute or so it passed out of sight altogether.
I stood there on the corner waiting for the light and a taxi swung by. I had the briefest glimpse inside the back and I saw Velda sitting there with somebody else. I couldn't stop it and I couldn't chase it. I had to stand there and think about it until I was all mixed up and I wasn't going to feel right until I knew the score. An empty cab came along and I told him to take me down to Forty-seventh Street.
The house was in the middle of the block. It was a beat-up affair fifty years old bearing the scars only a neighborhood like that can give it. The doorbell position said Todd lived on the ground floor in back. I didn't have to do any ringing because the front door was open. The hall was littered with junk I had to push aside until I came to the door that had Todd written on the card in the square metal holder.
I didn't have to ring any bells here either. This door was open too. I shoved it open and the light streamed out around me, light that glistened off the fetid pools of vomit on the floor, shining even more ominously from the drops of blood between the pools.
The blood was in the hall too, and the light picked it up. It made sticky sounds on the soles of my shoes.
With a rod in my hand I would have felt better. It's company that can do your talking for you and a voice they listen to. I missed the rod, but I went in anyway but on my toes ready to move if I had to.
Nothing happened.
But I saw what had happened.
The glasses were there on the table with a half-empty bottle of mixer and an almost empty fifth of whisky. Ice had melted in the bowl with a few small pieces floating on top of the water.
On the floor was the remains of a milk bottle and there was blood all over one piece. Velda had given him the chloral treatment and he went out, but somehow he had spilled it out of his system and made a play for her. He would have killed her if he could have but she got him with the milk bottle.