Not that I would feel better. It just seemed as though that’s what I ought to say.
A few minutes later Patrolman Ziccatta came back out of the station house and began walking back and forth, looking for us. We were across the street and down a way to his left, in plain sight, with a streetlight just down at the corner behind us. I rolled my side window down and waved my arms at him, but he just kept walking back and forth and he couldn’t find us.
All in all, Patrolman Ziccatta was not an ideal cop. He couldn’t twirl his nightstick worth a damn, he didn’t like poking his nose into other people’s business, and he couldn’t find a 1938 Packard parked directly across the street under a streetlight.
I finally had to holler, “Hey!”
He looked up, looked around, and saw us. In fact, he pointed at us, as though showing us to himself. He smiled, pleased to find us at last, and came across the street.
I said, sotto voce, “Did you find out anything?”
“Did I?” he said. “You bet I did.” He leaned a forearm on the Packard, above my side window, and leaned down so his face was framed in the window. He smiled past me at Chloe and said, “Hello, there.”
She smiled back, a little more sweetly than necessary I thought, and said, “Hello again.”
“Hello, hello,” I said, somewhat snappish. “What did you find out?”
“This might not be the right Patrick Mahoney,” he said. “There’s probably more Patrick Mahoneys on the force than you could shake a stick at.”
“I don’t want to shake a stick at anybody,” I said. “Tell me about the Patrick Mahoney you’ve got.”
“Well, he’s a wheel,” he said. “He’s a deputy chief inspector, and that’s right under an assistant chief inspector.”
“Wow,” I said snidely. “What does he deputy chief inspect?”
“He’s in the Mob & Rackets Squad,” he said. “He’d be second in command under Assistant Chief Inspector Fink.”
“What’s the Mob & Rackets Squad?”
“It’s something they started after all that stuff came out on television about the Cosa Nostra. It’s a special squad to be on the lookout for organized crime in New York City.”
“I wonder if they find any,” I said.
“I don’t know if he’s the Mahoney you want,” Patrolman Ziccatta said.
I told him, “I’ll be mightily surprised if he isn’t. Where’s he stationed, at Centre Street?”
“No. At Headquarters out in Queens.”
“Queens,” I said.
“It’s probably in the phone book,” he said. “Somewhere out in Queens.”
“Queens.”
He nodded. “Yeah. Queens.”
“The Mob & Rackets Squad is out in Queens.”
“Well, you know. It’s a bureaucracy, Charlie, you know that.”
“Sure. Thanks a lot, anyway. I really appreciate it.”
“Any time, Charlie. And if there’s anything I can do, whatever the problem is here, I don’t want to pry but you know I’ll do all I can to help.”
“I know that,” I said, and I did. Patrolman Ziccatta really was a first-rate guy. How he ever got on the force I do not know.
“Thanks again,” I said.
He lowered his head so he could smile past me at Chloe again. “Well,” he said to her, “good-bye again.”
“So long,” she said, and smiled upon him once more.
Ostentatiously I started the engine. “I don’t want to keep you from your appointed rounds,” I said.
“That’s mailmen,” he said, but he backed away from the car and the conversation was over.
As we drove away, Chloe said, “He’s sweet.”
I said nothing. I was feeling mixed emotions.
Chapter 19
All the streets in Greenwich Village are one way the other way. I pushed the Packard around most of the Village, like a landlocked Flying Dutchman, and finally came on Perry Street from the rear. “Almost there,” I said.
“It’s about time.”
“If you knew a quicker way,” I said, “all you had to do was speak up.”
“You’re driving,” she told me. For some reason, we’d been snapping at each other since Canarsie.
I was about to answer — about to say, in fact, “Thanks for the information” — when I saw the black car, the famous black car, parked by a fire hydrant directly across the street from Artie’s apartment. I almost missed it, almost passed it by, because there was only one of them in it, either Trask or Slade, and I had come to think of them as inseparable, like the Doublemint girls. But there was no reason they wouldn’t split up from time to time, for one to rest or go get fresh orders or some such thing. In this case my guess would be the other one was with Deputy Chief Inspector Mahoney.
Chloe, still blissfully unaware, said, “There’s a parking space. Isn’t that incredible?”
It was, but I went on by. The next intersection was West Fourth Street — this was two blocks north of where West Fourth crosses West Tenth and one block south of where West Fourth crosses West Eleventh, if you’re keeping a crime map — and West Fourth Street is one way west, or south, so I took it.
Chloe said, “Hey! That was a parking space!”
“Trask or Slade,” I said.
“What?”
“The killers. One of them is parked across the street from Artie’s place.”
She turned around in the seat and looked out the back window, although we’d now turned the corner and gone an additional block, so it was unlikely she could see in front of Artie’s place too clearly. She squinted and said, “Are you sure?”
“I’m sure. I know those guys pretty good by now.”
“In front of Artie’s place? How come they’re in front of Artie’s place?”
“They’re ubiquitous,” I said.
“They’re what?”
“That means you told Uncle Al I was there once before.”
“Oh.” Then one beat late, she took offense: “What are you talking about? How was I supposed to know—”
“All right, never mind. The point is, what now?”
“I’m tired, Charlie,” she said. “I can’t tell you how tired I am.”
“Were there any lights in Artie’s windows, did you notice?”
“No. I was looking for parking spaces.”
I had come to Seventh Avenue and a red light. I was just as pleased to stop, since I had no idea where I was going. I said, “Is there any back way into his building, around from the next street?”
“I don’t know. How would I know?”
“I don’t know how you’d know. I’m tired too.”
She said, “Isn’t there any place else?”
I shook my head. “Artie was the only guy I could think of last night. What about your place?”
“Sorry. I’ve got two roommates, and they’re both schizo enough as it is. I’m not about to bring a man in, in the middle of the night.”
“Then I don’t know.”
The light turned green. Seventh Avenue is one way south. I turned that way, went about five feet, and was stopped by another red light.
Chloe said, “What about across the roofs?”
“What?”
“We’ll go in the building on the corner, and up on the roof, and along the roofs to Artie’s building, and down inside to the apartment.”
I said, “How do we get into the building on the corner?”
“Oh,” she said.
This light also turned green, and once again I turned right, this time onto Grove Street, which I took to Hudson Street, where the light was red.