Tony Acosta went out softly, closed the outer door without a sound.
Carmady stood by the desk, his fingertips stroking the top of it, his eyes on the floor. He stood like that for a long time.
«Carmady, the All-American sucker,» he said grimly, out loud. «A guy that plays with the help and carries the torch for stray broads. Yeah.»
He finished his drink, looked at his wrist watch, put on his hat and the blue suede raincoat, went out. Down the corridor in front of 914 he stopped, lifted his hand to knock, then dropped it without touching the door.
He went slowly on to the elevators and rode down to the street and his car.
The Tribune office was at Fourth and Spring. Carmady parked around the corner, went in at the employees’ entrance and rode to the fourth floor in a rickety elevator operated by an old man with a dead cigar in his mouth and a rolled magazine which he held six inches from his nose while he ran the elevator.
On the fourth floor big double doors were lettered City Room. Another old man sat outside them at a small desk with a call box.
Carmady tapped on the desk, said: «Adams. Carmady calling.»
The old man made noises into the box, released a key, pointed with his chin.
Carmady went through the doors, past a horseshoe copy desk, then past a row of small desks at which typewriters were being banged. At the far end a lanky red-haired man was doing nothing with his feet on a pulled-out drawer, the back of his neck on the back of a dangerously tilted swivel chair and a big pipe in his mouth pointed straight at the ceiling.
When Carmady stood beside him he moved his eyes down without moving any other part of his body and said around the pipe: «Greetings, Carmady. How’s the idle rich?»
Carmady said: «How’s a glance at your clips on a guy named Courtway? State Senator John Myerson Courtway, to be precise.»
Adams put his feet on the floor. He raised himself erect by pulling on the edge of his desk. He brought his pipe down level, took it out of his mouth and spit into a wastebasket. He said: «That old icicle? When was he ever news? Sure.» He stood up wearily, added: «Come along, Uncle,» and started along the end of the room.
They went along another row of desks, past a fat girl in smudged make-up who was typing and laughing at what she was writing.
They went through a door into a big room that was mostly six-foot tiers of filing cases with an occasional alcove in which there was a small table and a chair.
Adams prowled the filing cases, jerked one out and set a folder on a table.
«Park yourself. What’s the graft?»
Carmady leaned on the table on an elbow, scuffed through a thick wad of cuttings. They were monotonous, political in nature, not front page. Senator Courtway said this and that on this and that matter of public interest, addressed this and that meeting, went or returned from this and that place. It all seemed very dull.
He looked at a few halftone cuts of a thin, white-haired man with a blank, composed face, deep set dark eyes in which there was no light or warmth. After a while he said: «Got a print I could sneeze? A real one, I mean.»
Adams sighed, stretched himself, disappeared down the line of file walls. He came back with a shiny black and white photograph, tossed it down on the table.
«You can keep it,» he said. «We got dozens. The guy lives forever. Shall I have it autographed for you?»
Carmady looked at the photo with narrow eyes, for a long time. «It’s right,» he said slowly. «Was Courtway ever married?»
«Not since I left off my diapers,» Adams growled. «Probably not ever. Say, what’n hell’s the mystery?»
Carmady smiled slowly at him. He reached his flask out, set it on the table beside the folder. Adams’ face brightened swiftly and his long arm reached.
«Then he never had a kid,» Carmady said.
Adams leered over the flask. «Well — not for publication, I guess. If I’m any judge of a mug, not at all.» He drank deeply, wiped his lips, drank again.
«And that,» Carmady said, «is very funny indeed. Have three more drinks — and forget you ever saw me.»
THREE
The fat man put his face close to Carmady’s face. He said with a wheeze: «You think it’s fixed, neighbor?»
«Yeah. For Werra.»
«How much says so?»
«Count your poke.»
«I got five yards that want to grow.»
«Take it,» Carmady said tonelessly, and kept on looking at the back of a corn-blond head in a ringside seat. A white wrap with white fur was below the glassily waved hair. He couldn’t see the face. He didn’t have to.
The fat man blinked his eyes and got a thick wallet carefully out of a pocket inside his vest. He held it on the edge of his knee, counted out ten fifty-dollar bills, rolled them up, edged the wallet back against his ribs.
«You’re on, sucker,» he wheezed. «Let’s see your dough.»
Carmady brought his eyes back, reached out a flat pack of new hundreds, riffled them. He slipped five from under the printed band, held them out.
«Boy, this is from home,» the fat man said. He put his face close to Carmady’s face again. «I’m Skeets O’Neal. No little powders, huh?»
Carmady smiled very slowly and pushed his money into the fat man’s hand. «You hold it, Skeets. I’m Carmady. Old Marcus Carmady’s son. I can shoot faster than you can run — and fix it afterwards.»
The fat man took a long hard breath and leaned back in his seat. Tony Acosta stared soft-eyed at the money in the fat man’s pudgy tight hand. He licked his lips and turned a small embarrassed smile on Carmady.
«Gee, that’s lost dough, Mister Carmady,» he whispered. «Unless — unless you got something inside.»
«Enough to be worth a five-yard plunge,» Carmady growled.
The buzzer sounded for the sixth.
The first five had been anybody’s fight. The big blond boy, Duke Targo, wasn’t trying. The dark one, Deacon Werra, a powerful, loose-limbed Polack with bad teeth and only two cauliflower ears, had the physique but didn’t know anything but rough clinching and a giant swing that started in the basement and never connected. He had been good enough to hold Targo off so far. The fans razzed Targo a good deal.
When the stool swung back out of the ring Targo hitched at his black and silver trunks, smiled with a small tight smile at the girl in the white wrap. He was very good-looking, without a mark on him. There was blood on his left shoulder from Werra’s nose.
The bell rang and Werra charged across the ring, slid off Targo’s shoulder, got a left hook in. Targo got more of the hook than was in it. He piled back into the ropes, bounced out, clinched.
Carmady smiled quietly in the darkness.
The referee broke them easily. Targo broke clean, Werra tried for an uppercut and missed. They sparred for a minute. There was waltz music from the gallery. Then Werra started a swing from his shoetops. Targo seemed to wait for it, to wait for it to hit him. There was a queer strained smile on his face. The girl in the white wrap stood up suddenly.
Werra’s swing grazed Targo’s jaw. It barely staggered him. Targo lashed a long right that caught Werra over the eye. A left hook smashed Werra’s jaw, then a right cross almost to the same spot.
The dark boy went down on his hands and knees, slipped slowly all the way to the floor, lay with both his gloves under him. There were catcalls as he was counted out.
The fat man struggled to his feet, grinning hugely. He said: «How you like it, pal? Still think it was a set piece?»
«It came unstuck,» Carmady said in a voice as toneless as a police radio.
The fat man said: «So long, pal. Come around lots.» He kicked Carmady’s ankle climbing over him.