"You see anybody leave the building?"
"I'm ... not sure. I was looking for you."
"Okay, sugar. Stall 'em. They're coming up."
Austin Towers had had more than the hour he expected and he hadn't wasted any of it. Caesar and his friend were sitting up, shivering under cold wet sheets, trying to keep their feet off the sodden rug on the floor. The dull luster was still in their eyes, but they were awake enough to mumble complaints at Towers who threatened them with another bucket of ice water if they tried to get up.
When he heard me come in he almost dropped the pail and stood stiff in his tracks, waiting to see if I approved or not. Caesar let his head sag toward me and managed a sick grin. "Hi, Mike. Get... get this bastard ... outa here."
"Shut up, punk." I took the pail from Towers and sat it on the floor. "How good are they?"
"Man, I tried. Honest ..."
"Can they think coherently?"
"Yeah, I'd say so. It ain't exactly like a booze hangover. They . . ."
"Okay then, cut out." He started to move around me and I grabbed his arm. Very slowly I brought the .45 up where he could see it. His face went pasty white and his knees started to sag. "This is the kind of trouble that stuff brings. You're not invulnerable ... and kid, you're sure expendable as hell. Start thinking twice before you peddle that crap again."
His head bobbed in a nod and new life came back into his legs. "Man," he said, "I'm thinking! I'm thinking right now."
I let him go. "Scram."
He didn't wait for me to repeat the invitation. He even left his coat on the back of the chair. Caesar chuckled and tried to unwrap himself from the sheet. "Thanks, old pal Mike. That guy ... he sure was bugging us. Gimme a hand. I'm freezing to death."
"In a minute." I glanced at the other guy, slack-lipped and bony, like a sparrow under the wet cloth. "This the guy you were going to meet about Beaver?"
"Sure, Mike." He let out a belch and moaned, his teeth chattering. "So we meet like I said."
"You were going to meet me too, Caesar."
His face tried to scowl. "Look, if you're going to be like that ..." He saw me pick up the pail. "Okay, okay. I'm sorry. It ain't the end of the world."
I almost felt like telling him right then.
"Hey, Mister." The other one looked like he was coming apart at the seams. "I did like Caesar asked. My friend, he told me where this guy ... the one in the red vest, where he flops."
"Where?"
He gulped and tried to look straight at me. "Take ... this sheet off, huh?"
I hated to waste the time, but I couldn't afford to put up with a stubborn idiot. I undid the knots Tower had twisted the ends into and yanked the wet cloth away and he stumbled out of his chair and reached for the coat Towers had left and pulled it tightly around him, still shivering.
"Where?" I repeated.
"Carmine said he seen him at the Stanton Hotel. They're on the same floor."
"He describe him?"
"Tall. Skinny. Like kind of a mean character. He ain't there all the time, but he hangs onto his pad."
"What else?"
"Always the red vest. Never took it off. Like it was lucky or something." I started to leave, then: "Mister ..."
"Yeah?"
"You got a quarter? I'm flat."
I tossed five bucks on the chair. "Unwrap the idiot there and you can both blow your minds. Someday take a look in a mirror and see what's happening to you."
I picked up a cruising cab on Eighth Avenue and gave him the address of the Stanton. Before the turn of the century it had been an exclusive, well-appointed establishment catering to the wealthy idler who wanted privacy for his extramarital affairs, but time and changes in neighborhood patterns had turned it into a way station for transients and a semipermament pad for those living on the fringes of society.
A fifteen-truck Army convoy was blocking traffic, white-helmeted M.P.'s diverting cars west, and the driver-cut left, swearing at all the nonsense. "Like the damn war, yknow? You'd think we was being invaded. The way traffic is already they could hold them damn maneuvers someplace else."
"Maybe they hate the mayor," I said.
He growled in answer, swerved violently around a timid woman driver who was taking up a lane and a half and yanked the cab through a slot and made a right on Tenth Avenue. I looked at my watch. Five after ten. An hour and a half since the slaughter uptown. Enough time for Beaver to collect his gear and make another run.
I didn't wait for change. I threw a bill on the seat beside the driver and got out without bothering to close the door. Fingers of rain clawed at my face, wind-whipping the drenching spray around my legs. Inside the lobby of the Stanton clusters of men trying to look busy were staying away from the night. A uniformed patrolman, a walkie-talkie slung over his shoulder, finished checking the groups and pushed through the doors, looked up at the sky in disgust, then lowered his head against the wind and turned west.
I went in, cut across the lobby to the desk where a bored clerk with a cigarette drooping from the corner of his mouth was doing a crossword puzzle on the counter.
He didn't bother looking up. "No rooms," he said.
I flipped the puzzle to the floor and knocked the cigarette from his mouth with a backhanded swipe and his head snapped up with a mean snarl and he had his hand all cocked to swing when he saw my face and faded. "You got bad manners, friend."
"If you're looking for trouble ..."
"I am trouble, kiddo." I let him look at me for another few seconds, then he dropped his eyes and wiped his mouth, not liking what he saw. I reached in my pocket for the photos of Beaver. There were two left. Someplace I had left one, but it didn't matter now.
The clerk had seen cards like those before, but cops carried them, and I got the eyes again because he had figured me first for one thing, now he was trying to make me for another and it didn't jell. I put the card on the counter facing him. "Recognize him?"
He didn't want to talk, but he didn't want to know what would happen if he didn't, either. Finally he nodded. "Room 417."
"There now?"
"Came in earlier. His face was swollen and he was all bloodied up. What'd he do?"
"Nothing that would interest you."
"Listen, Mac ... we're trying to stay clean. This guy never gave us no fuss so why are you guys ..."
I grabbed his arm. "What guys?"
"There was another one before. Another cop. He wanted him too."
"Cop?"
"Sure. He had one of these mug cards."
Pat might have made it. One of his squad just might have gotten a lead and run it down. Enough of them had copies of the photos and one way or another Beaver could be nailed.
"You see them come out?" I asked him. "Naw. I don't watch them bums. You think I ain't got nothin' better to do?"
"Yeah, I don't think you have. Just one more thing ... stay off that phone."
A swamper in filthy coveralls was oiling down the wooden steps, so I pushed the button beside the elevators instead of walking up. The ancient machinery creaked and whined, finally groaning to a halt. The door slid open and two drunks were arguing over a bottle until one behind them pushed through with a muttered curse, almost knocking them down. He looked familiar, but I had seen too many lineups with these characters playing lead roles, so any of them could be familiar. The other two guys that pushed their way through were Vance Solito and Jimmy Healey, a pair of the Marbletop bunch who ran floating crap games on the side. I shoved the two drunks out to do their arguing and punched the button for the fourth floor.
Outside 417 I stopped and put my ear to the door. No sound at all. I slid the .45 out, thumbed the hammer back and rapped hard, twice. Nobody answered and I did it again with the same result. Then I tried the knob. The door was locked, but with the kind of lock it only took a minute to open. When I had the latch released I stepped aside and shoved it open and stared into the darkness that was intermittently lit by the reflected glow from a blinking light on the street below.