“I want you two boys to shake hands,” he said. “Fighting’s a dumb way to settle anything. What the hell were you arguing about, anyway?”
“He said I went to a lousy school,” one of the boys said.
“He said the same thing to me first.”
“I did not!”
“The hell you didn’t.”
“Now take it easy,” Nolan said, shaking their hard young shoulders. “Get this, and get it straight. Everybody’s school is a pretty sacred thing. You shouldn’t kid a guy about that.” For the moment Nolan believed what he said, and his voice was solemn with conviction. “A guy’s school is like his country and his mother. Everybody should respect his feeling about it, just like you respect his feeling about his mother.” Nolan remembered his own school as he talked, remembered it as it had never been; fine and warm and glorious. “You wouldn’t ever kid a guy about his mother, would you?” he asked the boys.
They shook their heads and stared at the sidewalk.
Nolan stood, took a bill from his pocket and handed it to one of the boys. “I want you to have a soda on me,” he said. “And cut out the fighting, hear?”
The boy fingered the dollar and Nolan suddenly realized that it was Dave Fiest’s money he had given away. He shook his head irritably, nervously, to dislodge that thought; and then he walked back to the car.
They drove on toward the city and Linda said, smiling: “You handled that just fine, Barny. I was proud of you.”
“I’m glad I did, you know. Kids shouldn’t have to bat each other around in street fights.”
Linda smiled faintly, thinking of Mark Brewster. She’d like to tell him about this incident. Barny was hardly a Chesterfieldian type, but his instincts were warm and human.
“Look, I want you to do me a favor,” Nolan said, as they pulled in front of the Simba. “Okay?”
“Yes, if I can, Barny.”
“Good girl.” He opened the glove compartment and removed a thick, newspaper-wrapped bundle that was tied tightly with thin cord. “I want you to hang onto this for a few weeks, kid. It’s evidence I’ll need in a case in a little while, and I want to make sure that no one else gets hold of it. Do you understand?”
She was certain her voice would give her away; but to her amazement it was quite steady as she asked casually, “What kind of evidence, Barny? Or wouldn’t I understand?”
He grinned. “You wouldn’t understand, kid. And you wouldn’t be interested anyway. How about it? Will you stick it away in your apartment for a few weeks?”
He dropped the bundle in her lap, and her hands took hold of it unconsciously. She said nothing for a moment, but she knew that he was watching her closely.
“Yes, I’ll keep it for you, Barny,” she said, and again her voice was miraculously steady.
Suddenly he said: “You like me, don’t you, Linda?”
“Please, Barny—”
“You like me, I know you do,” he said, stubbornly.
“Yes — I like you, Barny. We’re good friends.”
“I’m crazy about you,” he said, and there was an undercurrent of need in his voice. “Remember that, will you?”
He laughed again, strongly and cheerfully.
Linda sat beside him, her hands tensely holding the bundle in her lap; and, oddly, all she could think about was Mark Brewster.
“One thing,” Nolan said, casually, as he helped her from the car. “Don’t tell anybody about that evidence I gave you. It’s too complicated to explain, but it’ll be better if you keep it quiet.”
“Of course,” Linda said, and her voice was still steady.
9
Nolan watched her hurry across the sidewalk, holding his bundle of money in both hands. He grinned to himself and drove back to the Sixty-fifth feeling that a load had been lifted from his shoulders.
The idea of giving the money to Linda had occurred to him after he’d called Espizito; and he knew it had been an inspiration. Espizito would never tumble to that pitch. He’d be watching banks and safety lockers and Nolan himself; and a lot of good it would do him.
At the Sixty-fifth the time dragged. At twelve o’clock he muttered good night to Sergeant Odell and went downstairs to his car.
He drove South on Seventh Street toward Espizito’s club, passing the shuttered-up shops and markets that transformed the section by day into a rich noisy bedlam. This was an area Nolan knew well. He had fought with street gangs in these alleys, had stolen food and clothing from bearded Jewish tradesmen, and during his days with Petey Felickson, had prowled the neighborhood watching for the rival candidate’s canvassers.
That was when he’d met Espizito. Mike Espizito was an anomaly of that pinched and bitter time. A son of wealthy parents, a graduate of Temple University where he’d made his mark as the campus bookmaker, Mike had taken over a small section of South Philadelphia when he left school, and had serviced it with care and affection. Eventually he got in with Tommy Malone; and inevitably he got on top of Tommy Malone. After those days in the early Thirties, Mike Espizito had handled everything south of Market Street in Philadelphia. He was known as a mild amiable person as long as things were going his way. His only neurosis was a drastic aversion to bad news. He couldn’t tolerate failures or losses.
Nolan parked his car and walked up to the big double doors of Mike’s club, the Neapolitan, a flamboyant joint that featured name bands and the best of food and drink, and catered to the upper-crust of the city’s shadier elements. Tourists dropped in occasionally, and were treated like celebrities at Mike’s standing order. He liked to give simple people a run for their money.
Nolan went in, nodded to a captain of waiters, and walked up a winding stairway to the second floor, where there was a circular bar and a large dining room. He sat down and ordered a bottle of beer and a shot of rye.
Two of Espizito’s men, Hymie Solstein and Laddy O’Neill, joined him in a few minutes. They were both big men, sharply dressed, and they greeted Nolan with a casual confidence that he found irritating.
Hymie was short but weighed nearly three hundred pounds, and his round blunt features had been scrambled in every conceivable fashion. His nose had been broken and rebroken, and his babyishly rounded forehead was studded with a collection of ridges, lumps, and contusions. He had dark thinning hair and the smile of an evil-minded angel.
Laddy O’Neill was taller than Nolan, with huge rangy shoulders and arms as long as a professional basketball player’s. He had been a wrestler for years, and was known to be a bad man with a gun, knife, ice-pick, or anything else that came to hand.
They sat down on either side of him and Hymie thumped his back while Laddy shook his hand.
“The boss is waiting,” Hymie said. “Let’s go.”
“I got a drink to finish.”
“You know how he is about being kept waiting.”
Nolan looked directly into Hymie’s battered face. He didn’t like him or his out-sized shadow, Laddy O’Neill. They were punks with tough-guy mannerisms picked up from the movies. “I know all about how he is about waiting,” he said. “But I still got a drink to finish.”
He tossed off the shot and drank the beer slowly, deliberately. The bartender brushed away his attempt to pay, so he climbed off the stool and followed Laddy’s wide shoulders through the dining room and down a short corridor that ended against a heavy, reinforced door.
Laddy knocked and the door swung inward. A thin, sallow-cheeked man in a dinner jacket glanced at them, then stepped aside and said, “Come in, boys. Hello, Barny.”
The man in the dinner jacket was Slicker Robinson, one of Mike’s top men. Barny nodded to him, and saw that Espizito was at his desk, talking on the phone. Mike smiled a greeting at him. “Won’t be a second,” he said, cupping a hand over the receiver. “Sit down and have a drink.”