The guy grunted back. “What a party, huh?” Leon said. “Biggest party in the world. Were you here?”
The guy smiled for a flash. He had nice white teeth against a tanned complexion. “Nope. Was at some private function. Whooping it up.”
“Ah, good for you,” Leon said. “More high class, more fun, I bet, than hanging out here in the streets.” He spread out his arm. “Here, it was jammed to the damn gills, you know? Could hardly walk around. Lots of people drunk and fighting; some of the girls kissing. Years from now there’ll be newsreels and photos, all saying what a great place it was… and they’ll skip over the fights, the bad breath, the drunks throwing up on your shoes.”
“Yeah, I guess.”
Leon stood up from his broom and started to work. Sweep. And then stopped.
“Hey,” he said. “I know you.”
The guy took another drag. “No, I don’t think so. Don’t think we ever met.”
“No, no, I never forget a face,” he said. “That’s what my wife, Donna, said, before she died a couple of years back. I never forget a face.”
The man just stood there, looking slightly put off, and then Leon snapped his fingers. “Got it! I’ve seen your photo a couple of times. You’re Sonny Delano. Am I right?”
Delano smirked. “What, you a cop under that garbage man costume?”
Leon smiled back at him. “You think I’m a cop, Mister Delano? Ha, that’s a good one…” He took another sweep. “Don’t mean to be any trouble… it’s just that, well, hell, it’s you, Mister Delano. Over the past years you’ve been in the papers a lot, you know? You got pinched at least a dozen times, and each time you walked, am I right?”
Same smirk on the younger man’s face. “That’s right. DA and coppers could never make anything stick.”
“Good for you,” Leon said. He picked up his broom, knocked it against the edge of the curb. “Hard to believe, you know? Nearly four years on, and now it’s over. War is done. Peace treaty to be signed in a couple of weeks. Funny thing, ain’t it.”
“Whaddya mean, funny?”
Leon leaned against his broom once more. “Think about it, Mister Delano. Day before yesterday, if you were a Jap sailor or soldier, you could get killed, just like that.” Leon snapped his fingers for emphasis. “Now, no more killing. The war is over. In less than forty-eight hours, you went from being a target to something else. Same for you, too.”
“Huh?”
“Well, no offense, Mister Delano, but you know… the stuff you were involved with… I mean, the stuff the coppers and the newspapers said you were involved with. Selling sugar and meat on the black market. Stealing rubber tires. Making fake gas coupons. A couple days ago, I bet, the coppers were still on your trail. But the war’s over now. I read that, pretty soon, all this rationing is gonna be over. You’ll be in the clear. You must feel pretty good about that. All the stuff you might have done during the war, well, you’re in the clear. Who’s gonna bother you about all that?”
A funny little grin, a puff from his cigarette. Leon said, “So. What are you going to do now, Mister Delano?”
He brushed some dust from one of his coat sleeves. “Who knows. The war over, lots of opportunities for sharp guys to make a buck. Guys coming home with money in their pockets, looking to get married, make babies, get new homes. Yeah, there’s gonna be a big boom coming, you just wait and see.”
“And you’ll be there, making a buck, right?”
“You know it.”
Leon went back to work for a few seconds. Sweep, sweep, sweep. He caught Delano’s eye again. “You know, no offense, you look pretty healthy. Good shape. Why weren’t you in the service?”
Delano’s eyes narrowed and seemed to turn from neutral to freezing cold. “I was exempt,” he nearly spat out. “Four-F.”
“Oh. A doctor said that, huh?”
“Yeah. I got a bad ticker. The hell business is it of yours?”
“Sorry. My wife told me I always yapped. You know, you did what a lot of other guys did, am I right or am I right? You see that story last year, how the entire Penn State swimming team, they got medical deferments, too? Hey, that’s how the system was rigged. Some guys went out and served, and other guys, they could pull strings and stay home.”
“Way of the world, pal.”
“I guess so.”
Leon swept up the sidewalk, leaving Spike’s Place behind him. His breathing was raspy, and his head ached. Too much coffee, cigarettes, and thinking last night had kept him up. Sweep, sweep, sweep. He worked his way back down to Spike’s Place, where Delano was still waiting. Of course, he was still waiting. Leon was counting on it.
“Some job you got there,” Delano said.
He shrugged. “It’s a job. You know, I got kicked out of my other job because I was too old, too slow. But I like to keep busy, I like to contribute.”
Delano grunted. Leon said, “Look at this city, will you? Best city in the world. You know why it works? For the most part, people get along, look out for each other, cooperate. Oh, they do business and make money and build things, but I’d like to think, for the most part, that people are honest, like to live on the straight and narrow. That’s how it works. That’s the only way it can work.”
The man looked at his watch, moved his feet impatiently, looked at his watch again. Leon chose his next words carefully. “But there’s always the parasites, the sucker fish, the ones who ride along and get something for nothing, or for little. Like the draft dodgers, the hustlers, the thieves… like you.”
The ice-cold look in those killer eyes had come back. “It’s time for you to get back to work, trash man.”
Leon said, “You ever hear of Bataan?”
“Who the hell hasn’t?”
“Lots of people have already forgotten it,” Leon said, the words coming out hard. “My son was there, fighting for the Filipinos, fighting for the U.S., fighting for you, Mister Delano. Don’t you feel any sense of… oh, I don’t know, thanks for what he and hundreds of thousands of others did? Respect? Guilt?”
Delano tossed his cigarette butt to the ground. “Clean that up, old man, and leave me the hell alone. I’m meeting someone important this morning.”
Leon reached over with his broom, caught the cigarette butt, swept it back to him. “I bet you are. Let me guess. Ty Mulcahey, right? Connected with the dockworkers union. Was going to meet you because, pretty soon, lots of troop ships are going to come through this wonderful harbor, and you and Ty wanted to see what kind of action you could get from all those ships and soldiers coming here.”
Delano stepped out of the alcove. “How the hell did you know that?”
Leon smiled, leaned on his broom. “You’re gonna love this, Mister Delano. You see, I never did tell you what I did before I came here today as a broom sweeper. I worked for the government. Department of Justice. When I started, it was called the Bureau of Investigation, but now you and folks listening to the radio know it as the FBI.”
He wondered if Delano was going to make a break for it and was happy to see the guy stay in one spot, like he wasn’t about ready to back down. “What… the… hell?”
“Got friends in the field office here, pulled a couple of strings-hey, just like you-and got word to you that Ty Mulcahey wanted to meet you here at Spike’s Place. But Ty’s not coming. He’s probably sleeping off a drunk over at Hell’s Kitchen. Nope, Ty didn’t want to meet you, but I sure as hell wanted to.”
“You got nothing.”
Leon laughed. “Hell, tell me something I don’t know! Me and the boys in blue here, we’ve been chasing you for years, right up until I was forced out on retirement. Just like Tom Dewey and Frank Hogan, the DAs. Even the Little Flower called you New York’s Public Enemy Number One last year. He wanted to do to you what he did to Lucky Luciano, arrest him and line him up to get deported, but it never panned out. So here you stand, still a free man. Feel pretty good about yourself?”