“All right, I’m coming. Barny, I must go.”
“Sure, sure,” he said, getting to his feet awkwardly. “Look, how about picking you up later?”
She didn’t have the heart to make any excuses. “Of course, Barny. After the last show.”
He grinned at her, and suddenly the gray depression was gone. “Great,” he said. “Great. Knock ’em dead, kid. See you later.”
Outside the Simba, Nolan paused indecisively for a moment, watching the crowds strolling by; and then he walked west, glancing into shooting galleries, book stores, movie lobbies. He stopped at a busy newsstand and nodded to the proprietor, a corpulent cheerful man who took horse bets.
“Seen Laddy O’Neill or Hymie around here lately?” he asked.
The vendor looked blank. Nolan said, “It’s just a personal matter.”
“Oh, sure, Barny, they came out of the Simba about half an hour ago. They were walking west.”
Nolan drifted into a few bars, moving slowly, deliberately, savoring a pleasant feeling of release. For the first time in what seemed an eternity he had a definite, physical object for his anger.
When he reached Twentieth Street he stopped and lit a cigar. The traffic of the night, couples hand-in-hand, derelicts, young men in sports jackets, on the make, flowed past him as he thought about Hymie and Laddy. Automatically, with cop-bred skill he began plotting their probable course for the rest of the night. He had checked a few bars with the thought that they might have stopped for a drink after leaving the Simba. Obviously they hadn’t. They’d probably returned to Espizito’s club to report. After that they might try Mama Ragoni’s for food, Ace MaGuire’s for bowling or billiards, or half a dozen other spots for craps or poker. Nolan knew where their women lived, too; that would be his last stop.
He returned to his car and drove down to South Philly where he found a parking place about a block from Mama Ragoni’s. The neighborhood was a rich and yeasty one, redolent of pepperoni, capacoli and Chianti; and on warm nights the steps of the row of houses were occupied by elderly men playing checkers, and women who held sleeping babies in their arms and talked to one another in soft voices. Under the street lamp at the corner, teen-aged boys and girls formed noisy groups; and from the open doors of cafés the jingling melodies of Puccini, Donizetti and Verdi soared into the night.
Nolan had grown up in a neighborhood like this one, but in times when there had been very little pepperoni and Chianti, and when the men weren’t working; and the kids who hung around the street corners were afraid they’d never get a job, and would never have any money for girls or dates or clothes. Everyone was afraid in those days, and Nolan had done a lot of street fighting to prove he wasn’t.
Mama Ragoni’s wasn’t crowded. Two or three men stood at the bar, and in the rear dining room only two tables were occupied. At one table sat two young men with dates; and at the other sat Laddy and Hymie, attacking steaming plates of veal scallopini. Wicker-wrapped flasks of Chianti were at their elbows.
Nolan paused in the doorway for an instant, and then walked slowly into the dining room.
Laddy O’Neill glanced up and saw him coming. He put his fork down and nudged Hymie with his knee. Hymie looked up smiling, but then his eyes narrowed slightly. He lifted a glass of Chianti to the detective, and said, blandly: “Hi ya, keed. Got time for a drink?”
Nolan didn’t hear him. He was conscious of nothing but the two faces before him, the smiling faces of the men who had bothered Linda. His gun came out so swiftly that neither of them had a chance to move. He slapped the barrel across Laddy’s face with every ounce of strength in his arm, and the big man toppled backward and hit the floor with a crash. Hymie came to his feet, swearing loudly, but Nolan had already started his back-handed swing and the gun barrel struck his temple as he grabbed for a wine bottle.
Hymie sat back down drunkenly, cursing in a confused, mumbling voice, and holding his bleeding head in both hands. Laddy came up to his feet and Nolan kicked him squarely in the mouth. O’Neill went backward, knocked over a table and landed on his back.
A girl at the other table was screaming wildly. The two young men were trying to pull her toward the bar but she fought them off and continued to scream in a demented fashion.
Nolan leaped on top of Laddy and slapped the gun barrel across his face four times, viciously, deliberately. Then he stood and turned to Hymie who was still holding his head and moaning softly.
“Punks,” he said, shouting the word. “Don’t come near me again, hear? You hear that?”
He put his gun away and strode past the screaming girl into the barroom. Mama Ragoni was behind the bar, pale and tearful. “You crazy man,” she yelled. “You crazy man. I’ll call the police.”
Nolan’s anger was already gone. The physical release had drained him and he felt calm and empty. He turned to Mama Ragoni and flipped out his wallet and showed her his shield.
“What do you want a cop for?”
“You crazy man!” she said in a hoarse, incredulous voice.
“Yeah?” Nolan walked out smiling.
Mark Brewster knocked on Linda’s dressing room door at twelve-thirty, half an hour after he’d got her call. She let him in and he saw that she was pale beneath her make-up.
“Thanks for coming over.” She twisted her hands together nervously. “I can’t offer you a drink, but maybe you’d like a cigarette.”
Mark saw that she was on edge. “Nothing at all, thanks,” he said. “Why don’t we sit down?”
“I’m sorry. I should have thought of that.” She rubbed her forehead. “I’m all mixed up, Mark.”
“Supposing you tell me what Laddy and Hymie wanted.”
“They were curious about Barny.” She sat down, looked at her hands. “Specifically they wanted to know if he’d given me any money.”
“Well, Espizito isn’t wasting any time, obviously. Then what?”
“That’s about all. Jim came by then, and they left. After that Barny was here.”
“Oh? Did you call him, too?”
“No, he just came by to see me. He’d been drinking — he acted as if he might explode any minute.”
Mark lit a cigarette. “I can control my sympathy for him with practically no effort at all,” he said dryly. “Did you tell him about Laddy’s and Hymie’s visit?”
“Yes.”
“They’ll probably regret that they stopped by without invitations. Did Nolan have anything else to say?”
Linda stood and walked to her dressing table. She picked up a cigarette but didn’t put it in her mouth. “He wanted to see me later tonight,” she said. “He seemed, oh, I don’t know, as if he couldn’t go on much longer.”
“And what did you tell him?”
“I told him I’d see him, of course. He’s meeting me here after my last show.”
They were silent a moment; and then Mark struck a match and nodded to her cigarette. “You might as well light that thing,” he said.
“Thank you.”
“You had to see him, of course,” he said, and dropped the match deliberately onto the floor.
“Yes, I had to, Mark. Not because I was afraid of arousing his suspicions or anything like that. But simply because he seems to have got into more trouble than he can stand.”
“He chose his trouble pretty deliberately,” Mark said, meeting her eyes. “Are you forgetting that?”
“I’m not forgetting anything. But, Mark, there’s something about him — oh, I just can’t put it in words. He’s like a baby at times. He’s turbulent, rebellious and yet so damn simple and helpless.”
“You love the guy, don’t you?” Mark said, standing. “Why don’t you say that, instead of giving me this social-service worker routine?”