“I swear on my Aunt Christina’s hair. She blows up, and she takes off, and I give her four, five minutes. Then I follow her. That’s all there is to it. Lord, I wouldn’t follow no blonde.”
Temple looked at Meyer.
“I’ll take you up to the house,” Oroglio said, plunging on. “I’ll introduce you. She’s my wife! Listen, what do you want? She’s my wife!”
“I’ll bet she is,” Meyer said resignedly. Patiently, he turned to Temple. “Go back to the car, George,” he said. “I’ll check this out.”
Oroglio sighed. “Gee, this is kind of funny, you know that?” he said, relieved. “I mean being accused of following my own wife. It’s kind of funny.”
“It could’ve been funnier,” Meyer said.
“Yeah? How?”
“She could’ve been somebody else’s wife.”
He stood in the shadows of the alley, wearing the night like a cloak. He could hear his own shallow breathing and beyond that the vast murmur of the city, the murmur of a big-bellied woman in sleep. There were lights in some of the apartments, solitary sentinels piercing the blackness with unblinking yellow. It was dark where he stood, though, and the darkness was a friend to him, and they stood shoulder to shoulder. Only his eyes glowed in the darkness, watching, waiting.
He saw the woman long before she crossed the street.
She was wearing flats, rubber-soled and rubber-heeled, and she made no sound, but he saw her instantly, and he tensed himself against the sooty brick wall of the building, waiting, studying her, watching the careless way in which she carried her purse.
She looked athletic, this one.
A beer barrel with squat legs. He liked them better when they looked feminine. This one didn’t wear high heels, and there was a springy bounce to her walk; she was probably one of these walkers, one of these girls who do six miles before breakfast. She was closer now, still with that bounce in her step as if she were on a pogo stick. She was grinning, too, grinning like a big baboon picking lice; maybe she was coming home from bingo or maybe a poker session; maybe she’d just made a big killing, and maybe this big bouncing baby’s bag was just crammed full of juicy bills.
He reached out.
His arm circled her neck, and he pulled her to him before she could scream, yanking her into the blackened mouth of the alley. He swung her around then, releasing her neck, catching her sweater up in one big hand, holding it bunched in his fist, slamming her against the brick wall of the building.
“Quiet,” he said. His voice was very low. He looked at her face. She had hard green eyes, and the eyes were narrow now, watching him. She had a thick nose and leathery skin.
“What do you want from me?” she asked. Her voice was gruff.
“Your purse,” he answered. “Quick.”
“Why are you wearing sunglasses?”
“Give me your purse!”
He reached for it, and she swung it away from him. His hand tightened on the sweater. He pulled her off the wall for an instant and then slammed her back against the bricks again. “The purse!”
“No!”
He bunched his left fist and hurled it at her mouth. The woman’s head rocked back. She shook it, dazed.
“Listen,” he said, “listen to me. I don’t want to hurt you, you hear? That was just a warning. Now, give me the purse, and don’t make a peep after I’m gone, you hear? Not a peep!”
The woman slowly wiped the back of her hand across her mouth. She looked at the blood in the darkness, and then she hissed, “Don’t touch me again, you punk!”
He brought back his fist. She kicked him suddenly, and he bent over in pain. She struck out at his face, her fleshy fists bunching, hitting him over and over again.
“You stupid…” he started, and then he caught her hands and shoved her back against the wall. He hit her twice, feeling his bunched knuckles smashing into her stupid, ugly face. She fell back against the wall, moaned, and then collapsed to the concrete at his feet.
He stood over her, breathing heavily. He looked over his shoulder, staring off down the street, lifting the sunglasses for a better view. There was no one in sight. Hastily, he bent down and retrieved the purse from where it had fallen.
The woman did not move.
He looked at her again, wondering. Dammit, why had she been so stupid? He hadn’t wanted this to happen. He bent down again, and he put his head on her bosom. She was breathing. He rose, satisfied, and a small smile flitted across his face.
He stood over her, and he bowed, the hand with the purse crossing his waist gallantly, and he said, “Clifford thanks you, madam.”
And then he ran into the night.
4
The bulls of the 87th Squad, no matter what else they agreed upon, generally disagreed upon the comparative worth of the various stool pigeons they employed from time to time. For as the old maid remarked upon kissing the cow, “It’s all a matter of taste,” and one cop’s pigeon might very well be another cop’s poison.
It was generally conceded that Danny Gimp was the most trustworthy of the lot, but even Danny’s staunchest supporters realized that some of their colleagues got better results from some of the other birds. That all of them relied heavily upon information garnered from underworld contacts was an undisputed fact; it was simply a question of whom you preferred to use.
Hal Willis favored a man named Fats Donner.
In fact, with Donner’s solicited and recompensed aid, he had cracked many a tough nut straight down the middle. And there was no question but what Clifford, the mugger with the courtly bow, was beginning to be a tough nut.
There was only one drawback to using Donner, and that was his penchant for Turkish baths. Willis was a thin man. He did not enjoy losing three or four pounds whenever he asked Donner a question.
Donner, on the other hand, was not only fat; he was Fats. And Fats, for the benefit of the uninitiated, is “fat” in the plural. He was obese. He was immense. He was mountainous.
He sat with a towel draped across his lap, the thick layers of flesh quivering everywhere on his body as he sucked in the steam that surrounded him and Willis. His body was a pale, sickly white, and Willis suspected he was a junkie, but he’d be damned if he’d pull in a good pigeon on a holding rap.
Donner sat, a great white Buddha, sucking in steam. Willis watched him, sweating.
“Clifford, huh?” Donner asked. His voice was a deep, sepulchral rattle, as if Death were his silent partner.
“Clifford,” Willis said. He could feel the perspiration seeping up into his close-cropped hair, could feel it trickling down the back of his neck, over his narrow shoulders, across his naked backbone. He was hot. His mouth was dry. He watched Donner languishing like a huge contented vegetable and he cursed all fat men, and he said, “Clifford. You must have read about him. It’s in all the papers.”
“I don’t dig papers, man,” Donner said. “Only the funnies.”
“Okay, he’s a mugger. He slams his victims before he takes off, and then he bows from the waist and says, ‘Clifford thanks you, madam.’”
“Only chicks this guy taps?”
“So far,” Willis said.
“I don’t make him, dad,” Donner said, shaking his head, sprinkling sweat on to the tiled walls around him. “Clifford. The name’s from nowhere. Hit me again.”
“He wears sunglasses. Last two times out, anyway.”
“Cheaters? He flies by night, this cat?”
“Yes?”
“Clifford, chicks, cheaters. All Cs. A cokie?”
“We don’t know.”
“C, you dig me?” Donner said. “Clifford, chicks…”
“I caught it the first time around,” Willis answered.
Donner shrugged. It seemed to be getting hotter in the steam room. The steam billowed up from hidden instruments of the devil, smothering the room with a thick blanket of soggy, heat-laden mist. Willis sighed heavily.