“Stick ’em up, gents,” said Tough Tony. “It’s the end of the road.”
Chapter 27
Riding toward New York in the back seat of the police car, sitting next to Tough Tony Touhy, I got the rest of the story.
“We’ve been on to that Rockaway Grill for months,” he told me. “For instance, Patrolman Ziccatta isn’t really a patrolman at all. He’s a detective third grade, working out of the Mob & Rackets Squad, on special detached duty to the 69th Precinct in Canarsie so he can keep an eye on the Rockaway Grill. There’s nothing like disguising a cop as a cop to allay suspicion.” He laughed, a big healthy hearty sort of a laugh, and slapped his own knee.
I said, “You mean, all this time he’s been watching me?”
“Not you so much,” Tough Tony said. “The bar, the customers, that’s what he’s been watching. The other night, when he saw Trask and Slade in there, he figured they were just coming by to make another drop or pick up another package. But a little later, when he saw part of the sign knocked down, and saw the back door broken in, and saw you nowhere around the place, he began to think there was something up, and he called me right away.”
I said, “So you’ve been hanging around me the whole time.”
“Well, not exactly,” he said. “To tell you the truth, we didn’t know where you were or what the hell was going on till last night, when you showed up in Canarsie again, asking about a policeman named Patrick Mahoney. Ziccatta called me and then tried to stall you until we could get a tail on you. Up till then none of us could figure out what was going on, but when you asked about Mahoney dawn began to break. I remembered telling him you were the source of the dope we’d been getting, and I could see how he’d get the idea I meant you were the one talking to us, and slowly the pieces began to fit into place.”
“So,” I said. “You’ve had people watching me ever since last night.”
“No, not precisely,” he said. “Ziccatta didn’t manage to stall you long enough, so you were gone before our man could get there from Queens. But we knew you were going to try to reach Mahoney, so we surrounded him with men and waited for you to show up. That was easy, surrounding him with men, since there he was right in Police Headquarters anyway.” He laughed again and slapped his knee some more.
“Well,” I said. “So you had me in view from the time I got to Police Headquarters.”
“I wouldn’t entirely say that,” he said. “To tell you the truth, we didn’t expect such a direct approach from you, and none of our special-detail men even knew you were in the building. If Mahoney hadn’t called me to come into his office, where I could get a look at you, I don’t know what would have happened. Still, all’s well that ends well. And when saw you there, I knew exactly what was going on, and I knew Mahoney wanted to see if I’d recognize you or not, so naturally I said what I did, in order to keep Mahoney from getting suspicious. I figured then we’d watch you, see where you were taken and what happened next.”
“Ah,” I said, breathing a sigh of relief. “So you were on hand the whole time out at Orient Point and I really wasn’t in danger at all.”
“Well, no,” he said. “The fact of the matter is, they moved you on out of Headquarters faster than we expected. We lost you again practically as soon as we’d found you.”
I said, “Then how did you show up at Mr. Gross’s house?”
“We followed Mahoney.”
“Oh.” I looked out the window and we were in Queens. “You can let me off at the subway,” I said. “Any subway.” I looked at him. “You can find the subway, can’t you?”
He gave me a tough look. “Is that supposed to be funny?” he said. “We saved your life.”
“Oh, yeah,” I said. “I forgot.”
Chapter 28
It was rush hour. When the train reached West Fourth Street I had to claw my way through a mass of sullen humanity to get through the door and out onto the platform. That was possibly the most dangerous moment I’d lived during the past week.
But I did make it to the platform, and the doors snicked shut behind me, and the subway raced its squirming mass of innards southward through the black tunnel. I went up stairs, and up stairs, and up stairs, and eventually got to the street. I walked west through the begining of evening, through the Village.
I didn’t know her home address, and I didn’t know her parents’ address in the Bronx. This was the only place I knew her, so this was where I came.
I walked down Perry Street and I saw light gleaming in those windows, but did that mean Chloe or did it mean Artie back at last from his unexplained disappearance? Although I wanted to know what the hell Artie had been doing the last couple of days, at the same time I wished desperately for it to be Chloe up there.
Murder wasn’t the only thing I’d been figuring out this afternoon. I’d also been figuring Chloe. I’d come to some realizations about Chloe, and I was eager to get started acting on those realizations.
Like for instance her telling me her life story last night, all about her marriage and her little girl and everything. She wouldn’t have told me all that if she thought we were just a couple of ships passing in the night. No, it meant she was interested in me, interested in me, and willing to see where the interest might lead.
And also, like for instance, her telling me she knew I had a letch for her because she heard me tossing and turning until practically dawn. What I didn’t stop to realize at the time, what I only figured out hours later when my brain was all tuned up and figuring out everything that came its way, was if she had heard me tossing and turning until practically dawn that had to mean she was awake until practically dawn herself. And what did that mean?
You betcha.
So I hurried across Perry Street toward those lighted windows, second-floor front, hoping it was Chloe and not Artie, and I dashed up the steps outside the building, found the door unlocked yet again, and bounded on up the stairs to the second floor. I knocked on the door, and waited, and knocked again, and at last it opened.
Chloe.
She had changed clothes. She was wearing a black skirt that flared out over her hips, with a lot of fluffy petticoat sort of things underneath to make the skirt stand out even more, and she had a scoop-neck white blouse on that did nothing bad at all for her breasts, and she was wearing stockings and high heels, and she had a good moderate amount of make-up on, and she looked absolutely fabulous.
I suddenly felt raunchy. Still in the same slacks I’d been wearing since this thing started. Same shoes too. Borrowed underwear. Borrowed white shirt that was too small for me. Borrowed raincoat.
I wished I’d thought to stop off at my place in Canarsie first to get cleaned up.
She looked at me standing there in the hallway, and she smiled in a tentative kind of way and said, “You looking for a place to hide out, mister?”
I shook my head. “It’s all over,” I said. “We won.”
“What? Really?”
So the first thing I had to do was come in and sit down and have a cup of coffee and tell her what had happened, tell her the whole day in the tiniest detail. Which I did, and she made suitable comments here and there, and when I was done she said, “So you came back to get your own clothes and leave Artie’s stuff here, is that it?”
I shook my head again. “No. I came back here to get you.”
“Me?” Said as though she had no idea what I was talking about.
So I reached out and pulled her close and kissed her. We melted awhile, and then we split and looked at each other and both started giggling. “And here I’d given up on you,” she said, giggling.