“I don’t know,” Angelo said, puzzled. “I got hit on the back of the head, and then I was down...”
“Like what happened to Fritzie,” Farvo said. Farvo was a fat man who blinked a lot. He blinked because he was trying to shut out the sight of a wife who’d shot herself in the head while he watched. We all knew why he blinked, and so we never mentioned it. Men can become good neighbors when their common mortar is despair.
“And Diego got it like that, too,” Marty said. “Just like that, with nobody around. It’s crazy, that’s all.”
“Do you think the cops, maybe?” Danny asked.
“No,” I said.
“Why not?”
“Why should it be the cops? They’ve got no reason for wholesale beatings. This is about the sixth guy in a week.”
“The cops are good at this kind of thing,” Farvo said, blinking.
“Only when they’ve got a reason.”
“Cops don’t need no reason,” Marty said.
No one answered him. We got Angelo to his feet, and we took him to the Professor. The Professor had once been a chemist, until he’d begun sampling the drugs he’d handled. He still knew how to dress a cut. He’d helped me once, and he helped Angelo now, and when he was through with his bandages, he asked, “What are we going to do, Matt?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
“This is a community, you know,” he said. “It may be the world’s worst community, and maybe its citizens are all pigs, but that’s no reason to turn it into a slaughterhouse.”
“No,” I said.
“You ever run into anything like this before? You used to run a detective agency. Did you ever...”
“No, nothing exactly like it,” I said.
“So what are we going to do?”
“Keep our eyes open,” I said. “We’ll find whoever’s responsible.”
“You’d think he’d leave us alone,” the Professor said sadly. “You’d think we got enough troubles.”
“Yeah,” I said.
Our troubles got bigger. Farvo turned up the next night. Farvo wasn’t blinking, and he’d never blink again. Farvo had been beaten to death.
I started the way I had to start, in the streets. I kept my eyes open and my ears open, and the August sun didn’t help my job because the August sun was very hot. When a shirt is dirty, it sticks like glue. When your soles are thin, the pavement scorches up through them. When you need a haircut, your hair mats to your forehead, clinging and damp. I took to the streets, and I thought of gin and tonics and fancy restaurant-bars. I talked to Fritzie first.
Fritzie’s arm was still in a cast. Fritzie’s face had not been hurt too badly, except for the bridge of his nose, which was still swollen. The back of his head carried a large patch, and you could see the bald spot surrounding it where the doctors had shaved his hair to get at the cut.
“Farvo’s dead,” I told him. “Did you know that?”
“Yeah,” Fritzie said. “I heard.”
“We figure the same guy who’d been doing the rest. You think so?”
“It could be,” Fritzie said.
“Did you get a look at the guy?”
“No,” Fritzie said.
“Where’d it happen?”
“On Houston. I’d made a big kill, Matt. Six bits from some society guy and his broad. You shoulda seen this broad, Matt, diamond clips in her hair, and her bubs all spilling out the front of her dress. It was her got him to give me the six bits.”
“Go ahead, Fritzie.”
“I got a jug, you know? Some cheap stuff, but what the hell, all wine tastes the same.”
“So?”
“So I killed the jug, and I was walking down Houston, and that’s when the El fell down.”
“Did you see who hit you?”
“I told you. No. I got hit on the back of the head.” Fritzie’s hand went up to the patch, his fingers touching it gingerly.
“What happened then?”
“I fell down, and the son of a bitch kicked me in the face. That’s how I got this nose. It’s a wonder it didn’t come out the hole in the back of my head.” Fritzie shook his head forlornly.
“Then what?”
“Then nothing, as far as I’m concerned. That was all she wrote, Matt. I blacked out. When I come to, I see my arm there next to my side, but it’s pointing up in the wrong direction, as if it was glued on wrong at the elbow. Matt, it hurt like a bastard.”
“What’d you do?”
“I went to the clinic. They said I had a compound fracture. They set it for me. It was no picnic, man.”
“You have any money on you?”
“Hell, no,” Fritzie said. He paused and touched his patch again. “What you think, Matt?”
“Jesus,” I said. “I don’t know.”
Detective-Lieutenant Thomas Randazzo was a good-looking man in a brown tweed suit. The uniformed cop led me into his office, and Randazzo rose, smiled, and offered me his hand, which I took.
“Cordell, huh?” he said.
“Yes,” I told him.
“What’s on your mind, Cordell?”
“A man named Gino Farvo was beaten to death a few nights ago,” I said. “I was wondering...”
“We’re working on it now,” Randazzo said, still smiling pleasantly.
“Have you got anything yet?”
“Why?” he said.
“I’m working on it, too.”
“You?” Randazzo’s eyebrows quirked in smiling curiosity.
“Yes,” I said. “Me.”
“I thought your license had been yanked.”
“I’m working on it as a private citizen.”
“Maybe you’d better leave it to us,” Randazzo said politely.
“I’m interested in it,” I said. “These men are my friends. These men...”
“What do you mean, these men?”
“Farvo isn’t the first,” I said. “He just happens to be the most.”
“Oh, I see.” Randazzo paused. “So naturally, you’re interested.”
“Yes,” I said.
Randazzo smiled. “Forget it, Cordell. We’ll take care of it.”
“I’d rather...”
“Cordell, you’ve had enough headaches with the police department. No, look, seriously, I’m not trying to be a smart guy. I know all about that time with your license.”
“What’s that got to do with it?”
“Nothing. She wants to play around with... what was his name? Garth, yes, that’s okay with me. But I know what it must have done to you. So you beat him with a .45, and we yanked your license. I don’t make judgments. Maybe you did the right thing. But...”
“That’s all water under the bridge,” I said.
“Water under the bridge,” he said. “Fine and good, Cordell. Don’t mess in this, please. I appreciate your offer of help, no, honestly, I really do. But you’ve had enough to do with cops. You’ve had enough to last you a lifetime.” He paused. “Why don’t you get out of the Bowery, Cordell?”
“I like the Bowery,” I said.
“Have you ever tried to get your license back?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“That’s my business. Randazzo, have you got any leads on this Farvo thing? Anything at all? Anything I can...”
Randazzo shook his head. “I’m sorry, Cordell. I don’t want you in this.”
“Okay,” I said.
“You understand? It’s for your own good.”
“Sure.”
“Don’t be sore at me. I’m just...”
“I’m not sore at you.”
“No?”
“No. I’m sore at whoever killed Farvo.”
I talked to Diego, who had been beaten very badly a few weeks back. Diego had been the first, and we hadn’t thought too much about it at the time, until the beatings took on the look of an epidemic. Diego was from Puerto Rico, and he didn’t talk English too well. The scars on his face had healed by this time, but whoever had beaten him had left scars deep in his eyes that time would never remove.