"Let's take the other reason why I don't like it."
"Go ahead."
"For a nothing guy like him it's too nasty a kill. Now suppose we see how smart you still are, friend."
I glanced over at the discolored sawdust and felt my mouth turn sour. "One of three things. A psycho kill, a revenge kill or a torture kill. He could have stayed alive a long time with his belly slit open before somebody pounded the knife into his chest."
"Which one, Mike?" Pat's voice had a curious edge to it.
My own voice sounded strange. "I don't know yet."
"Yet?"
"Why don't you handle it your own way?" I said.
'Td love to, but I got that funny feeling again, Mike. Sometimes I can smell the way you think."
"Not this time."
"Okay, I'll buy it for now. See you in the morning?"
"Roger, kiddo."
The Blue Ribbon Restaurant on West Forty-fourth had closed an hour ago, but George and his wife were keeping Velda company in a corner booth over endless pots of coffee, and when I came in she gave me one of those "You did it again" looks and propped her chin on her hands, patiently waiting for an explanation. I sat down next to her, brushed my lips across that beautiful auburn pageboy roll of hair that curled around her shoulders and patted her thigh gently. "Sorry, honey," I said.
George shook his head in mock wonder and poured my coffee. "How you can stand up somebody like your girl here gets me, Mike. Now you take a Greek like me ..."
His wife threw the hooks right into him. "To see my husband, I have to work the cash register. He loves this place more than he does me."
"Business is business," I reminded her.
Velda let her hand fall on top of mine and the warmth of her skin was like a gentle massage. "What happened, Mike?"
"Lippy Sullivan got himself sliced to death."
"Lippy?"
"Don't ask me why. That cat never did anything to get himself a smack in the eye. Somebody just got to him and took him apart. It could have been for any reason. Hell, in that neighborhood, you can get knocked off for a dime. Look at that wino last week ... murder for a half bottle of muscatel. Two days before and a block away some old dame gets mugged and killed for a three-dollar take. Great. Fun City at its best. If the pollution doesn't get you, the traffic will. If you live through those two you're fair game for the street hunters. So stay under the lights, kids, and carry a roll of quarters in your fist. The damn liberals haven't outlawed money as a deadly weapon yet."
Velda's fingers squeezed around mine. "Did they find anything?"
"What the hell would Lippy have? A few bucks in his pocket, an almost punched-out lunch ticket, and some old clothes. But the lab'll come up with something. Any nut who killed like that wouldn't be careful about keeping it clean. It's just a stupid murder that happened to a nice guy."
"Nobody heard anything?" Velda asked me.
"The way he got sliced he wasn't about to yell or anything else. Anybody could have walked in there, knocked on his door, got in and laid a blade on him. The front door was open, the super had his TV going and a belly full of beer and if anybody on the block saw anything they haven't said so this far."
"Mike ... you said he had a few dollars ..."
"Stuffed into his watch pocket," I interrupted. "They don't even make pants with them any more."
"There has to be a reason for murder, Mike."
"Not always," I told her. "Not any more. It's getting to be a way of life."
We finished our coffee, said so long to George and his wife and grabbed a cab on the corner of Sixth Avenue. It was a corner I couldn't remember any longer. All the old places were gone and architectural hangovers towered into the night air, the windows like dimly lit dead eyes watching the city gasping harder for breath every day.
New York was going to hell with itself. A monumental tombstone to commercialism.
When we reached Velda's apartment she looked at me expectantly. "Nightcap?"
"Can I pass this time?"
"You're rough on a woman's ego. I had something special to show you."
"I'd be lacking appreciation tonight, kitten."
Her gentle smile told me all I needed to know. She had been around me too long not to recognize the signs. "You have to do it, Mike."
"Just to make sure. The damn thing bugs me."
"I understand. Ill see you at the office tomorrow." She leaned over, tasted my mouth with hers and brushed her fingers down my cheek. I said good night, watched her go into the building and told the driver to take me home.
The killing of Lippy Sullivan was only a one-column squib in the morning papers, the body being reported as having been discovered by a friend. Political news, a suspected gangland rubout of a prominent hood and the latest antics of a jet set divorce trial made Lippy the nonentity in death that he was in life.
My official statement had been taken down by a bored steno, signed, and Pat and I sat back to enjoy the cardboard-container tasting coffee. Ever since I had come in he had been giving me a funny, wary-eyed look and I was waiting for him to spit out what was on his mind. He took his own sweet time about it, swinging around in his swivel chair and making small talk.
Finally Pat said, "We were lucky on this one, buddy."
"How?"
"Your name didn't bring the grand explosion I thought it would."
I shrugged and took a sip of the coffee. It was bitter. "Maybe the old days are gone."
"Not with this bunch in office. When Schneider got knocked off last night it gave them something bigger to play with."
I put the empty container on his desk and sat back. "Quit playing games, Pat," I said.
He stopped swinging in the chair and gave me another of those looks again. "I got the lab report. A practically untraceable knife, no prints on the weapon at all ... nothing. The only prints on the doorknob were yours, so the killer apparently used gloves. Six other sets of prints were picked up in the room ... Lippy's, the super's, two guys from the furniture store on Eighth Avenue who moved in a couch for him and two unidentified. The super had the idea that Lippy was friendly with a guy upstairs who used to have a beer with him now and then. He moved out a week ago. No forwarding address."
"And the other set?"
"We're running them through R and I now. If we don't have anything, Washington may come up with a lead."
"You're sure going to a lot of trouble," I said.
"Murders are murders. We're not concerned with a pedigree."
"This is old Mike you're jazzing now, friend. You're making like it was a prime project."
Pat waited a minute, his face tight, then: "You holding back, Mike?"
"For Pete's sake, what the hell kind of a deal is this? So I knew the guy. We weren't roommates. You get a lousy kill in your lap and right away you got me slanted for working an angle. Come off it."
"Okay, relax. But don't say I haven't got just cause, kid. Knowing a guy's enough to get you kicking around and that's just what I don't want."
"Balls."
"All right," he told me, "we checked Lippy out ... his employers gave him a clean bill. He worked hard at a low-paying job, never any absenteeism, he was a friendly, well-liked guy ... no previous history of trouble, didn't drink, gamble, and he paid his bills. He got himself killed, but he had memorized your number beforehand."
Pat stopped for a second and I said, "Go on."
"The lab came up with something else. There were traces of tape adhesive around his mouth. Nobody heard him yell because he didn't. Your friend Lippy was gagged, tortured and finally stabbed to death. The way we reconstructed it was that the killer simply walked in off the street, knocked on the door, was admitted, knocked Lippy out, searched the place and when he didn't find what he was after, took him apart with a knife."