I looked at Pat curiously and said, "Nice, real nice. Why don't you fill in the holes? I was there too."
Pat nodded and sat back again, still watching me. "There was a contusion behind Lippy's ear that apparently came from a padded billy. Certain articles were out of position indicating a search of the premises. Or did you poke around?"
"A little," I admitted. "I didn't disturb anything."
"This was a search. Expert, but noticeable."
"For what?"
"That's what I'd like to know." I got another one of those long searching looks again. "He was your friend, Mike. What aren't you telling me?"
"Man, you're a hard one to convince."
"Let the details filter upstairs to one of those new bright boys in the D.A.'s office and they'll be even harder to convince. Right now there's not much noise because Lippy wasn't much of a guy, but somebody's going to read these reports, and somebody's going to start making waves. And, friend, they'll break right over your head."
"Once more around the track, Pat," I said. "You know everything I know. Just hope those prints show something. If I can think of anything you'll get it fast and in triplicate. Who's assigned to the case?"
"Jenkins and Wiley. Theyve been drawing all blanks too. Nobody saw or heard anything. Wiley's been using an informer we have on the block and the guy says the talk is square. The oddballs are coming and going in that neighborhood all the time and nobody pays any attention to them. They might come up with a lead, but the longer it takes the slimmer the chances are."
"Sorry about that."
Pat grunted and gave me a relieved grin. "Okay, pal. I don't like to lay it on either. I guess there can be one kill in the city that doesn't have to have you involved in it."
I stood up and put on my hat. "Hell," I said, "I'm too old for that crap any more anyway."
He gave me another of those unintelligible grunts and nodded thoughtfully. "Yeah, sure you are," he said.
The cabbie wanted to edge out of the heavy traffic so he cut over to Eighth Avenue going north and stayed in the fire lane, making the lights at a leisurely pace. I cranked the window down and let the thick air of the city slap at the side of my face, heavy with smells from the sidewalk markets, laced with the acrid tang of exhaust fumes that belched out of laboring trucks and buses. The voice of the city kept up its incessant growl, like a dog who didn't know whom to pick on and settled on everybody in general. Most people out there never even heard the voice, I thought. Even the smells were the natural condition of things. Someday I was going to get the hell out of here. I was glad I had nothing to do about Lippy. So he was a guy I knew. I knew lots of guys. Some were alive. Some were dead.
Then we were almost at Forty-sixth Street and I wondered who the hell I thought I was fooling and told the driver to pull over and let me out. I handed him a couple of singles, slammed the door, watched him pull away and crossed the street over to where Lippy Sullivan had died such a messy death. All I could say to myself was, "Damn!
CHAPTER 2
The fat little super who smelled of sweat and beer didn't give me any lip this time. It wasn't because of the first time or because he had seen me there in the midst of the homicide squad with a gold shield cop my buddy. It was because I was the same kind of New York he was, only from a direction he was afraid of. There was nothing he could put his finger on; a squawk wouldn't bother me and could hurt him, and if he didn't play it nice and easy he could play it hard and get himself squeezed.
So he played it right and whined how he had told everything he knew which wasn't anything at all and let me into Lippy's room with his passkey, idly complaining about how he had to clean up the mess that had been left around before the flies got into it and the stink got worse than it was. Nobody paid him extra and the damn nosy cops wouldn't let him rent the room out until the investigation was over and he was losing a commission.
I shoved him out of the room, slammed the door in his face and flipped the overhead light on with my elbow. The stain was still there on the floor, but the sawdust was gone and so was the chalked outline of Lippy's body. And so was Lippy's new couch. I had seen it in the super's apartment when he had opened the door for me.
There wasn't anything special to look for. The cops had done all that. What I wanted was to know Lippy just a little bit better. I could remember a skinny little kid with a banana stalk in a street fight, swinging it out against the Peterstown bunch, then the soda bottle collection to pay for the six stitches the doctor over Delaney's Drugstore had to put in his eyebrow. Some stupid sergeant gave him a B.A.R. to tote during the war and he hauled it all over Europe until he finally got a medal for using it in the right place at the right time. Then he just went back to being Lippy Sullivan again with nobody except the Internal
Revenue Service and me ever knowing his real first name, and now he was dead.
So long, Lippy. Wish I had known you better. Maybe I will.
I had been in too many pads like this not to pick up the little signs. It wasn't what was there. It was what wasn't. There was that little Spartan touch that flipped you right back into an Army barracks where what you had you kept in your pocket. Lippy had been here almost two years and he hadn't collected anything at all. The shade on the lamp had been patched and painted to match the fabric, the old chair in the corner had been repaired where it was possible and the cracks in the plastered walls had been grouted to keep the roaches contained and the drafts out.
The one cupboard held an assortment of chili, hash, a half-dozen eggs, some canned vegetables, two boxes of salt and an oversized can of pepper. Lippy didn't exactly live high off the hog. But then again, he didn't ask for much, either. He sure didn't ask to get killed.
I took my time and went through his stuff piece by piece and wound up wondering what he had that made him valuable enough to die like he did. There wasn't one damn place he could have hidden anything and not the slightest sign that he even tried.
Yet somebody had sliced him up to make him talk.
Without thinking I sat on the edge of his bed, then stretched out and folded my hands behind my head and looked at the ceiling. It was a lousy bed but a lot better than what we had in the Army sometimes. Come on, Lippy, what was it? Did you have something? Did you see something? Why remember my phone number?
I let a curse slip across my lips because Lippy himself had given me the answer. What was it? Yeah ... No reason, Mike ...no reason." And at a time like that a guy just doesn't lie.
But he had called for me and without having to say it, told me not to let him go out like that, a nothing nobody with a first name the world would never remember, but with that single phone call he had begged me not to let him be just another statistic in the massive book of records the great city keeps for its unrecognizables.
All right, Lippy. You are a somebody. Get off my back, will you? Maybe you didn't think there was a reason, but somebody else sure as hell had a good one for killing you.
I slid off the bed and picked my hat off the floor, then got to my feet and walked to the door. To the empty
room I said, "Mike, you're getting old. The edge is off. You're missing something. It's right here and you're missing it."
The super popped the door open before I even knocked. I walked in past him to the couch against the wall, pulled the cushions off and unzipped the covers. Inside was a foam rubber pad and nothing else. I turned it over and felt around the burlap and canvas bottom, but there was nothing there either. I knew the cops had gone through the same routine so I wasn't really expecting to find anything anyway. When I finished I left it like it was and looked at the slob with the half-empty beer can who was hating me with his eyes. "Put it back where you got it," I said.