“You said dig. I dug. Better than a C-note, I figure. But you know my policy—”
“Yeah, yeah. Pay before say.”
“My place. Thirty minutes. Back stairs.”
It was a four-story, red brick hotel with a busted elevator and the smell of backed-up toilets. Quinn took periodic breathers at each landing on his way up the narrow rear stairway. But he was still panting pretty good when he rapped on Kippy’s door on the fourth floor.
After no answer he removed his .38 from his shoulder holster, stepped beside the door frame, reached out and slowly turned the knob. The door swung open to black, except for the square of dim light on the rug from the neon across the street. Center stage, Kippy lay eagled out staring forever at the ceiling.
The lieutenant grimly noted three stab wounds in the little man’s chest.
By the time he’d finished typing his report on Kippy’s death, the early morning sun was sending a hard shaft of light through his office window. He jammed the duplicates in the “out” slot, yanked the blinds closed and opened Rizzo’s file. Through a curl of smoke from the butt in his mouth, he squinted at the photos of the market interior.
There was the meat cleaver Nick Rizzo’s head had been bashed with hanging on the hook behind the meat counter. Smudged prints. Nick, himself, had fallen where he was hit, in front of his ten-gallon aquarium. The killer had used one of Nick’s crowbars from a tool box in an aborted attempt to pry open the cash register. Smudged prints.
He rubbed his eyes wearily. Any other time he would have shoved it into the file marked Murder Incidental to Burglary. He was thinking this when he got buzzed.
Captain, Burke, a heavy-set twenty-year cop, sat flipping through the preliminary on Kippy’s murder. He frowned when Quinn came into the office.
“Was Kippy nosing for you?”
The lieutenant nodded.
“You figure a connection?”
“I figure.”
“He stumbled onto something on the Rizzo case.”
“Kippy phoned me at three this morning, Captain. He only does that when he’s got information he knows I’ll pay for. He doesn’t like sure cash to wait.”
Burke tossed the folder on the desk. “Okay. But whoever this killer is, I wouldn’t pry unless I had all my senses.”
Quinn lit a cigarette with what he thought was a pretty steady hand. “You mean stay off the hooch.”
“Exactly.”
“Sure.”
“I mean it, Quinn. You’re a damn fine cop. You know the Purple district like nobody else. But when you belly-up you do stupid things.”
“Yes, sir.”
As Quinn shut the door behind him, his arid mouth was crying for a drink. But he knew the captain was right. Now that Kippy’s ears were permanently out, he would have to get his shoes dirty.
The dirtiest place to start was Jess Newman’s, wherever in hell that was.
For the rest of the morning he toured the flop houses, burlesque shops and pool halls. He always seemed a step or two behind Jess. The pusher was like an eel, wriggling into whatever hole needed juice pumps. But shortly after one o’clock he found the current hole.
The Kitty Club was a beer bar on Stockstill Avenue, where they bowled with steel discs and it was a good place to get out of the rain, when it rained. The owner-bartender, fat and sixty, perched on a stool behind his cash register reading a comic magazine. The bar was otherwise empty.
Quinn dropped a twenty on the counter next to the register.
“Jess,” he said.
“Through the curtain, first door at the top of the stairs,” the fat man said, pulling the twenty out of sight.
And so was Jess Newman. He didn’t budge when the lieutenant rocked the door back on its hinges. He just rolled his watery grey eyes and said “Hi, cop.”
Pulling up a stool, Quinn sat down beside the dirty-sheeted cot on which the long and lanky man lay.
“How long’ve you been flying, Jess?”
“A week now, man.”
“You’ve landed once or twice.”
“Me?”
“You came down on Kippy.”
Jess grinned, showing his yellow teeth like tombstones in a cave. “Kippy? Kippy who?”
“He was looking for you.”
“Yeah? What for, man?”
“I asked him to.”
Quinn pulled out a pack of cigarettes. Jess blinked “no” to the offer. After lighting his, Quinn sent smoke at the gaunt face on the cot.
“Man shouldn’t play two sides,” Newman said. “Man slips off.”
“Let’s try Nick Rizzo.”
“Poor Nick. Heard he bought it all. Very bad, man.”
“What happened, Jess? You trip out and need some change? Or maybe you remembered Nick’s fist in your teeth.”
“That’s a bummer, too.”
“Where’s your knife, Jess?”
Jess Newman blinked. “Lost it — yeah.”
Quinn flipped the butt against the wall and yanked Newman up by his dirty collar. After he shook him he patted him down, then rolled him over, lifted the mattress and found nothing. He pulled open drawers, checked the bathroom and under rugs.
Finally back at the cot he stared down at the man. “You’re never without that blade, Jess. Now where would a guy keep his toy for—”
Grinning suddenly, Quinn reached toward the pillow. Jess Newman jabbed in his hand quicker and whipped out the six-inch switchblade. The razor edge slashed across Quinn’s hand. Still grinning, he stepped back as Newman got off the cot slow like a big cat.
“Yeah, you’re in flight, aren’t you,” Quinn said.
“Nobody take’s this man’s blade, cop.”
“Is that dry blood on it, Jess? Kippy’s maybe?”
As Newman’s eyes flicked to the blade, Quinn sent his left fist into the lanky man’s sharp jaw. Newman dropped like an empty bladder.
While they booked Jess Newman at the station, his eyes floated around in a sick daze. Quinn watched, but he was angry. Assault on a police officer was a long way from Murder One.
“I can maybe understand you sticking Kippy,” Quinn said. “Lot’s of blood, and you like that. But why didn’t you use the blade end of the cleaver on Nick?”
“What’s this rap get me?” Newman asked, ignoring Quinn’s question.
“You’ll be due in a couple of years.”
Jess Newman smiled. “On my head I could do that.”
“Yeah. On your head. And say hello to some of your pals up there, Jess. Of course they’re dried out now. I figure they’ll want to thank you for bleeding their money for a watered fix or two.”
The man’s already slack face went slacker.
Quinn felt better as he watched Newman escorted down the corridor toward the lockup. But at the steel-plated door Newman snapped his head around.
“I didn’t hit Rizzo! You hear me, Quinn? Chew on that and sleep! I didn’t hit him!”
In his office, Quinn dragged thoughtfully on his cigarette and watched the sun through the window bum across the late afternoon. The city lay hot and slumming under it. People were running in dumb circles trying to catch their tails. All but Nick Rizzo. The man who collected stray animals lay on a cold slab with a label on his toe. Leaning back, Quinn picked at the tight bandage on his hand.
The hand hurt, but no more than his dry mouth and his head, but the head was a different hurt. Jess Newman fitted too easy. His denial was too emphatic. But, somehow, he did fit. Kippy had found a part of it. Maybe all of it. Damn the careless idiot!
It was just after four o’clock when Quinn parked in the alley in front of the door to Leroy’s basement room. The big, innocent-looking man sat in a comer of his room looking very much like he hadn’t moved for hours. His face was still streaked with dry tear tracks. As he pulled up a wicker chair in front of Leroy, Quinn wondered who those tears were really for.
“Tell me about Tuesday, Leroy. Remember?”