The laddies were real efficient. Usually it took a month to get a gun permit. This one came through quick. I tucked it in my pocket and looked at the other slip of paper. There were seven digits there, and the first two had to be exchange letters. I found a pay phone and dialed.
A male voice said, “Yes?”
I said, “Big Man?”
He said, “That you, Ryan?”
“Me. And don’t trace this.”
His voice sounded strained. “What do you need, Irish?”
“Two guys. They work a ship that was in around the week a certain Juan Gonzales was killed. All I know is the alias. One’s Spanish Tom, the other ’Fredo... probably Alfredo. You big enough to handle it?”
“We’re big enough.”
I left the booth, walked to the corner and had two minutes before the unmarked cruiser drew up and the guys hopped out. Another one blocked off the street at the other end and a fast, systematic search started. I laughed at the slobs and walked away. Big Man was playing both ends from the middle.
I gave him an hour. It was plenty of time. They had men and equipment and millions and could do nearly any damn thing they wanted when they wanted.
I called and said, “Big Man?”
He said, “Both men are on the Gastry. It’s in port now. Spanish Tom is Tomas Escalante. The other one is Alfredo Lias. Both from Lisbon. They’ve been on the same ship since ’46. Both have had numerous drunk arrests in various ports but nothing more serious. The line vouches for their honesty.”
“Thanks. You haven’t bothered to look for them, have you?”
He caught the sarcasm. “They’re in port, Ryan. We’ve been looking but so far we haven’t found them.”
I laughed. “What would you ask them if you did?”
“We’d think of something.”
“Good for you,” I said. “There’s just one more thing I never bothered asking. You guys don’t operate without certain facts or at the most without ideas.”
“So?”
“What did you suspect Billings of having for sale?”
Quietly, he said, “A month ago two skin divers were killed going down on the wreck of the Andrea Doria.”
“I read about it.”
“There were three on the expedition. The last one hasn’t shown.”
“Go on.”
“It should be obvious. Highly classified material went down in that wreck and if found by the wrong parties could jeopardize the safety of the whole country. Possibly the whole world.”
After a moment he said, “That enough?”
I said, “That’s enough,” and hung up.
Nobody was outside and I walked away from the phone thinking about it. There were just too many possibilities now. Some of them had to go. I walked slowly and let things dribble through my mind. A pattern began to come out of it.
Further down the street I stepped into another phone booth, rang the apartment to see if Art was there. I let it ring a dozen times then decided he was either asleep or passed out, then gave up.
I picked up a paper from a newsstand. They had given me pretty good coverage. Pictures and all.
Police opinion seemed to be that it was a gang killing of some kind, that I had been poaching in foreign fields. There was speculation that I had been taken for an old-fashioned ride. So far their leads were lousy.
So was their liaison. The big agency upstairs that had conned me into this rumble wasn’t talking either.
Natural coloration is the animal’s best protection. In the slop chutes that were the playgrounds for the dock crowd I fitted smooth and easy. They could smell money on you, they knew you were brand new to the neighborhood, but all the time they knew the other thing they saw in your face. You just weren’t takable.
A couple I knew, tough apples who’d work any kind of a touch for pocket money. They passed me over with a nod and gave me room at the bar.
If the word was out all the way, it hadn’t reached here yet. But maybe they were figuring it the usual way... a hood hates to leave his own back yard. Every step away from his own hole and he becomes more vulnerable. His own distorted sense of security that led him into a hole in the first place makes him stay close to it even when he’s dying.
There could be another reason too. New York was a big town. The word can only travel just so fast... and it wasn’t good to think about it. Any time now the posters could go up and in this section hired guns were handy to get to.
The pair I spoke to on the Gastry didn’t have much to say about Escalante or Lias. As far as they knew, all they did in port was visit around the Spanish-speaking sections and get gassed up. Neither had steady women or much to do with the rest of the crew.
Neither one of them was very smart. Both were dull, plodding types who were at the peak of their earning capacity in the grimy hold of the freighter.
It just didn’t figure right. They weren’t 10-grand types. They weren’t international types. They weren’t the type anybody should get excited about or interested in for any damn reason whatsoever. Their being around at all had all the earmarks of a crazy, distracting coincidence like a fly in the soup but until I found them I couldn’t be sure.
A long time ago I learned how to get answers without ever having to ask the questions. But it took time. It took me from 57th Street down to the Battery and halfway back and by then it was night again with the same damn rain thick with dirt and soot that steamed up from the pavement and got inside your clothes.
But I found Spanish Tom. He was in the middle of a crowd of dock workers and the center of attraction, sitting on the pavement with his back against the overhead highway support and if you didn’t see the hole in him right away you’d think he was sleeping.
The uniformed cop taking notes squatted and held his coat open with the tip of his pencil and for a moment everybody quieted down and craned to see the business better. It was quite a tap, a real professional job, one hard knife jab under the ribs and up into the heart and that was the end.
I worked my way through to the front and stood there trying to figure the angle on it. I kind of started a trend and a few more wanted in close and when the cop stood up he yelled for everybody to get the hell away. He scared the half-drunk sailor beside me and he nudged the body and Spanish Tom flopped sideways on the pavement and one leg kicked out like he was still alive.
The cop yelled again and shoved the nearest ones away. He turned to me, but by then I had already backed off and the pasteboard ticket that had come out of Spanish Tom’s pocket was under my foot. I scraped it back, retrieved it, and squeezed back through the crowd.
In the one second I saw it I had thought it was a pawn slip, but when I got back under the light I could have spit. It was an ADMIT TWO in Spanish to some shindig up in the quarter. I crumbled it in my fist and threw it back in the gutter and mouthed a curse at it.
Then I thought about it again and picked it up. If Alfredo Lias had one of these too it could be the place he’d be at. The date was tomorrow; the place a bloody-up with an olé olé band. The clientele was the kind you saw in the tabloids leaning up against a wall while the fuzz frisked them.
But that was tomorrow. I had now to think about. Until tomorrow I had to stay out of sight of everybody and it wasn’t going to be easy. I flagged a cab down, gave an address a block away from Art’s and got out on an empty corner.
Halfway down I found the Wheeler Apartments and touched Art’s bell. The vestibule door was open so before he could answer I went ahead up. I knocked at his door and waited, knocked again and listened for him stirring around.