Trask said, “Fine. So we take the nephew.”
“I’m not done listening to him,” Mahoney said. But he looked doubtful.
I said, to keep him convinced, “You’ve got more at stake than these two. You can give me five minutes.”
He nodded. “Five minutes.” He said the same thing into the telephone: “Give us five minutes, then let us know the next time it’s clear.” He hung up and looked at me, long and thoughtful. Then he sat down behind his desk and said, “Okay. You got one point on your side. Now I got a question. If you didn’t come here to bump me off, how come you’re here?”
“For information,” I said.
“You want information? You’re supposed to be the one gives information.”
“But that’s just it, I’ve never given anybody any information about anything. The reason I went to Mr. Agricola and Mr. Gross was to find out why the syndicate was down on me, because I hadn’t done anything. Mr. Gross told me it was because you said I was being an informer. But I wasn’t, so I came here to ask you who told you I was.”
“That’s easy,” he said. “Tough Tony Touhy.”
“Who?”
“Lieutenant Anthony Touhy, Mob & Rackets Squad, known as Tough Tony. He’s the one been getting the information on that bar you run, and when I asked him where the dope was coming from he said straight from the bartender, from the guy that runs the place for the syndicate.”
“He said—” But I couldn’t go on. I was dumbfounded. I had never in my life heard of Tough Tony Touhy. Why should he say such a thing?
Mahoney said, “Tough Tony is an honest cop, a nonbought cop. I’m his superior officer. When I ask him where he gets his information from, he tells me. He’s got no reason to lie.”
I said, “But he did lie.”
Mahoney held up two soft palms, making believe they were scales. “On the one side,” he said, “we got the fact it don’t make any sense you should come to the station to try to kill me. On the other side we got the fact it don’t make any sense Tough Tony should lie to me.”
Trask said, “The nephew killed Farmer Agricola. We know that for sure.”
Slade said, “And I was there not half an hour before that. It makes me feel bad to think of it.”
Mahoney still mused over his upturned palms. “Over here,” he said, “we got to add the fact Tough Tony has never lied to me before, and we got to add the fact everybody agrees it was you bumped off Farmer Agricola, and we got to add the fact you come here toting a gun, and we got to add the fact you was in the best position of anybody to give us the information that was passed over.” The hand he was considering was sinking lower and lower under the weight of all the things he felt he had to add to it. Now, after a quick glance at me, he turned his attention to his other hand, which was way up in the air all by itself. “On this side,” he said, “we got nothing to add, nothing at all. So maybe you did come here to kill me instead of waiting outside my house, and maybe you tried it this way because you’re a dumbbell or you figured on the element of surprise or something.”
Trask and Slade both nodded. Slade said, “That’s it, nephew. That’s the way it adds up, all right.”
“Somebody,” I said, rather shakily, “somebody is using me for a fall guy. I never said a word to Tough Tony Touhy in my life, I never even heard of him until just now. Either he lied to you or you’re lying to Mr. Gross, and I wish I knew which.”
Mahoney actually looked insulted. “Me lying? What the hell for?”
“Maybe it was your fault that information got into the wrong hands,” I told him. “And you’ve been trying to cover up by putting the blame on me.”
“That’s about all I want to hear,” Mahoney said.
I appealed all at once to Trask. “It’s possible,” I said. “You must have talked with Mr. Gross by now, you must have compared descriptions and you know that wasn’t Miss Althea with me last night.”
Trask frowned. “So what?”
“So Mr. Gross figured I was in cahoots with Miss Althea and that’s why I was squealing to the police and killing people. But if I’m not in cahoots with Miss Althea, what’s my motive?”
Slade said, “Maybe it’s just plain orneriness.”
Trask said, “It ain’t our business to worry about your motive.”
I told him, “It’s your business to worry about whether the syndicate is running right or not. What if it is Mahoney behind this whole thing, covering up like mad for something he did wrong? So you take me out and kill me and it doesn’t change a thing, everything’s still all loused up. And Mahoney picks somebody else to be his fall guy next time, maybe even one of you two, and it just goes on and on and on.”
Mahoney got to his feet, rather hurriedly, crying, “Now, wait just a damn minute there!”
Trask, without looking away from me, waved a hand at Mahoney to shut up and sit down. Trask was looking both amused and interested, and he said, “All right, nephew, keep it up. What else you got to say?”
“I’m being used for a fall guy,” I told him, “that’s all I know for sure. Maybe it’s Mahoney, maybe it isn’t.”
Trask said, “What if it isn’t?” Like he was just killing time, just humoring me until the phone should ring again.
All right, I had the time, no matter what his reason for giving it to me, so it was up to me to use it. I said, “Did it ever occur to you, maybe the police force has caught on to Mahoney. Maybe they’re not sure, but they suspect he’s sold out to the syndicate, so just to be on the safe side they don’t give him any information that could make trouble. Like not telling him who the real informer is in a case like this, when the informer might still have more things to tell.”
Mahoney was gaping at me open-mouthed. Trask, still looking amused, now turned his head and said, “Well, Mahoney? What do you think of that?”
“I think,” said Mahoney, somewhat strangled, “I think that’s a lot of crap, that’s what I think.”
Slade said, “There’s one quick way to check.”
“Good,” I said, turning to him. “Fine. Let’s do it.” Mahoney looked at him somewhat warily. “What’s that?”
Slade said, “Is Touhy around?”
“I think so,” said Mahoney. “He should be in his office, yes.”
“Trask and I’ll get out of sight. You call Touhy in here. The kid says he’s never seen Touhy, never heard of him before this. Let’s see if Touhy recognizes him, see what Touhy says to him.”
“All right,” I said quickly. “That’s good.” And it was, it seemed to me, very good. Step by step I was coming around the circle to find the charges against me and the name of my accuser. From Uncle Al to Agricola to Gross to Mahoney, and now to Touhy. If only this could be at last the end of the line.
Mahoney seemed less pleased by the idea. “What if he spills the beans? What if he starts talking to Touhy?”
Trask smiled and shook his head. “He won’t. He’d only be killing Touhy, because we’d have to shut him up. You wouldn’t want to do that to poor Touhy, would you, nephew?”
I shook my head. “No. I won’t say anything.”
Mahoney said, “Shoot Tough Tony? Right here in my office?”
Slade told him, “I got a silencer. And we can carry the body out when we get the all-clear on the nephew.”
“Besides,” Trask added, “there won’t be any need for any shooting. Will there, nephew?”
“No,” I promised.
Mahoney, doubtful, said, “Well...”
“Come on,” Trask told him. “We don’t have much time.”
Mahoney shook his head; he still didn’t like it. But he said, “Let me see if Touhy’s in his office.”