Wineschlager’s single window faced a small back lot. A rusty heap, the front wheels gone, was nosed into the building just to the right of the window. I sat squatted at the rear of the heap.
The window was open about eight inches. Around ten forty-five the old man shoved hands through the thin curtains and pushed the window up another couple of inches. The brief glimpse was enough. The lamp, probably on a table, was centered on the window and the bed was across the room.
I waited an hour after the lamplight went out. Then I inched up on the fender of the rusty heap, put a foot over on the window sill, reached down and caught the bottom edge of the window.
Sucking a deep breath, I heaved the window up and swung both feet inside, sending the lamp crashing.
I propelled my body into the room, hit the floor and pitched forward in a flat racing dive, landing on the old man in the bed. He managed one startled yelp before I jammed the muzzle of the Saturday Night Special against his ear. “No noise!” I hissed.
I took him from the bed and put him in a chair in a comer. Then I turned on two lamps. He was a wrinkled old duffer, probably seventy or better. He was frightened, but he looked stuffed with ancient courage, too.
So I told him, “I don’t wanna kill you, pop, I don’t wanna hurtcha, so you just sit quiet, huh? Don’t make me do somethun I don’t wanna do.”
He wanted to come after me. But age had put creaks in his muscles and provided wisdom. He sat rigid in the chair and his eyes never seemed to leave me as I prowled, but he didn’t attempt to move.
Ransacking, I found money stuffed down behind cushions of an ancient chair and sagging couch, poked into the toes of old shoes, inside the ripped lining of a baggy overcoat. A shoe box in the portable closet was packed with bills.
I found a bed sheet, spread it on the floor and piled my finds. Then I knotted the sheet to form a bag and went to the window. The old man surprised me when I looked at him. He was crying.
I went out the window. The black sedan rolled silently down the alley to a stop in front of me as I bolted across the small lot. I didn’t even have time to careen off.
The door on the passenger side of the sedan opened and in the dashlight I saw Keever leaning toward me from the steering wheel. I grunted. The gun was in my pocket but I was using both hands to hold shut the sheet bag.
I figured Keever had me cold. And dead.
He growled, “Get your tail inside, man! We gotta get out of here!”
He was an expert at the wheel. We didn’t seem to speed, yet we moved fast through the city streets. Not that we were going to draw a ticket from any car prowl boys. We were in an official police sedan, the radio under the dash periodically bleating instructions to various police units.
I eased my hand down toward my pocket until Keever snarled, “Keep ’em in sight, Garcia. It ain’t that I figure you’ll try anything funny, but...”
He let the words hang and I said sourly, “It’s okay if I smoke, ain’t it? I’ve had a couple of nerve-jangling hours. It was rough.”
I got out a bent cigarette and a damp book of matches. The match wouldn’t light. Keever flicked his lighter for me, held it near the bent cigarette. “How much you figure you got?”
“A few bills here and there.”
He grunted. “An old geezer, livin’ alone, cashing pension checks for years, never spending a dime, no bank accounts, it’d figure there’d be a few bills here and there, yeah.” He nodded before he said sharply, “But a guy needs a sheet to haul off a few bills?”
My gun was where it was difficult to get at. His was in a belt rig where he could whip it out.
Keever turned into a side street, drove a couple of blocks and braked in a narrow off-street area, the nose of the car pointed into a pillar helping to hold up an overhead pass of an expressway.
We opened the sheet and counted. I’d taken $9,445 from Albert Wineschlager, probably every dime he owned.
“Wha’d yuh do to the old man?” Keever snapped.
“Left him sitting in a chair.”
“Dead or alive?”
“He was cryin’.”
“Big deal. Okay, five thou for me, the rest is yours — and before you open your yap, quit bitchin’ ’bout a short end. You never had this big a take in your life. Yuh wanna go another round, or yuh wanna get the hell outta town?”
I suspicioned how I’d leave town. In a grave.
“I’ve got a hunch,” I said carefully, “I could get rich — with a cop on my side.”
“Just don’t push. And live quiet. Stash that green stuff someplace and keep right on livin’ just like you’re livin’ now. No breakin’ out in fancy pads, or drivin’ fancy heaps, or hustlin’ fancy dames. You live quiet for six months or so and you can do all of your fancy livin’ in another corner of the world someday. There’s a few more touches around.”
“Can I ask a question?” I asked him.
“What?” Keever snarled.
“Have you lost your faith in the U.S. mail?”
“Get out,” he growled. “Get outta my goddamn car.”
I got out and I quickly put a concrete pillar between myself and the official sedan. But I didn’t breath easy until the taillights had disappeared. Then I walked, moving along as if I had a destination. I didn’t need prowl car boys busting me on a vag rap.
I was at a crossroad. I had Keever cold but he had become a fascination, too. I’d checked him out. He was a bachelor, never had married, he was a cop, and he lived modestly in a small rent apartment and drove a four-year-old sedan with wrinkles in two fenders.
You couldn’t call him a swinger, either. He had an occasional beer at a bowling alley, he took in a baseball game once in a while, and there were evenings when he’d go down to the river and just sit.
The single chink in this seemingly dull pattern was a dame who lived in a penthouse at the Armstrong Towers. Keever sometimes visited the dame. Her name was Tish Grant. She was tall, about thirty, and dark-haired. If certain people out along Crescent Street saw her, they might say she was Rhonda McCracken. I wasn’t sure.
The only thing I was sure of was Tish Grant — or Rhonda McCracken — was a class hooker. And she always accepted Keever’s presence. No matter the hour of day or night.
Then there was the other side of Keever. He obviously was a man of talent when it came to smelling out marks. And it now was a question of how many marks over how many months, years, had lost to him.
Too, he had to have a cache somewhere.
Possibly in various bank boxes rented under assumed names, of course. But maybe not. Perhaps he and a hooker were pooling — for future use together. And they might want to move very fast someday. Overnight. It was difficult to get into bank boxes overnight.
So I was at a crossroad...
It was a question of how much Keever, and possibly Tish Grant/Rhonda McCracken, had stashed somewhere, against my original purpose for allowing myself to be trapped on a fire escape ladder in an area of the city where Keever might bust me.
Greed could be cancerous. But greed also was a tremendously strong lure.
I broke into and cased the pale green bungalow at 451 °Crescent three week nights in a row. I didn’t find a penny. The bungalow seemed clean, a nice little home in a nice quiet neighborhood. The furnishings were new and modern, but Rhonda McCracken/Tish Grant — take your pick — hadn’t spent a fortune to make the house liveable.
I went over the bungalow again, stepping off wall lengths, checking closet depths, looking for double flooring and false ceilings, but all I found was an area of a basement wall where there might have been a water seepage problem.
Several of the cement brick blocks had been replaced, the calking cement fresh. It was enough for me.