"Sure, but guys in their seventies aren't going to hustle on a kill after thirty years in the pen. Be reasonable."
"Okay, but it wouldn't take long."
"Oh, hell," I said.
Sonny Motley's shoe repair shop had been open at seven as usual, the newsboy said, and pointed the place out to us. He was sitting in the window, a tired-looking old man bent over a metal foot a woman's shoe was fitted to, tapping on a heel. He nodded, peering up over his glasses at us like a shaven and partially bald Santa Claus.
Velda and I got up in the chairs and he put down his work to shuffle over to us, automatically beginning the routine of a shine. It wasn't a new place and the rack to one side of the machines was filled with completed and new jobs.
When he finished I gave him a buck and said, "Been here long?"
He rang the money up and smiled when I refused the change. "Year and a half." Then he pulled his glasses down a little more and looked at me closely. "Reporter?"
"Nope."
"Well, you look like a cop, but cops aren't interested in me any more. Not city cops. So that makes you independent, doesn't it?"
When I didn't answer him he chuckled. "I've had lots of experience with cops, son. Don't let it discourage you. What do you want to know?"
"You own this place?"
"Yup. Thirty years of saving a few cents a day the state paid me and making belts and wallets for the civilian trade outside bought me this. Really didn't cost much and it was the only trade I learned in the pen. But that's not what you want to know."
I laughed and nodded. "Okay, Sonny, it's about a promise you made a long time ago to kill Sim Torrence. "
"Yeah, I get asked that lots of times. Mostly by reporters though." He pulled his stool over and squatted on it. "Guess I was pretty mad back then." He smiled patiently and pushed his glasses up. "Let's say that if he up and died I wouldn't shed any tears, but I'll tell you Mr..."
"Hammer. Mike Hammer."
"Yes, Mr. Hammer... well, I'm just not about to go back inside walls again. Not that this is any different. Same work, same hours. But I'm on the outside. You understand?"
"Sure."
"Something else too. I'm old. I think different. I don't have those old feelings." He looked at Velda, then me. "Like with the women. Was a time when even thinking of one drove me nuts, knowing I couldn't have one. Oh, how I wanted to kill old Torrence then. But like I told you, once you get old the fire goes out and you don't care any more. Same way I feel about Torrence. I just don't care. Haven't even thought about him until somebody like you or a reporter shows up. Then I think of him and it gets funny. Sound silly to you?"
"Not so silly, Sonny."
He giggled and coughed, then looked up. "Silly like my name. Sonny. I was a heller with the women in them days. Looked young as hell and they loved to mother me. Made a lot of scores like that. For a moment his eyes grew dreamy, then he came back to the present. "Sonny. Ah, yeah, they were the days, but the fire is out now."
"Well..." I took Velda's arm and he caught the motion.
Eagerly, a man looking for company, he said, "If you want I could show you the papers on what happened. I had somebody save 'em. You wait here a minute." He got up, shuffled off through a curtained door, and we could hear him rummaging through his things. When he came back he laid out a pitiful few front pages of the old World and there he was spread all over the columns.
According to the testimony, in 1932 the Sonny Motley mob, with Black Conley second in command, were approached secretly by an unknown expert on heisting through an unrevealed medium. The offer was a beautifully engineered armored-car stickup. Sonny accepted and was given the intimate details of the robbery including facets known only to insiders which would make the thing come off.
Unfortunately, a young Assistant District Attorney named Sim Torrence got wind of the deal, checked it out, and with a squad of cops, broke up the robbery... but only after it had been accomplished. The transfer of three million dollars in cash had been made to a commandeered cab and in what looked like a spectacular double cross, or possibly an attempt to save his own skin, Black Conley had jumped in the cab when the shooting started and taken off, still firing back into the action with the rifle he had liked so well. One shot caught Sonny Motley and it was this that stopped his escape more than anything else. In an outburst of violence in the courtroom Sonny shouted that he had shot back at the bastard who double-crossed him and if he didn't hit him, then he'd get him and Torrence someday for sure. They never found the cab, the driver, the money, or Black Conley.
Sonny let me finish and when I handed the papers back said, "It would've gone if Blackie didn't pull out."
"Still sore?"
"Hell no."
"What do you think happened?"
"Tell you what, Mr. Hammer. I got me a guess. That was a double cross somehow, only a triple cross got thrown in. I think old Blackie wound up cab and all at the bottom of the river someplace."
"The money never showed."
"Nope. That went with Blackie too. Everybody lost. I just hope I did shoot the bastard before he died. I don't see how I coulda missed."
"You're still mad, Sonny."
"Naw, not really. Just annoyed about them thirty years he made me take. That Torrence really laid it on, but hell, he had it made. I was a three-timer by then anyway and would have taken life on any conviction. It sure made Torrence though." He pulled his glasses off, looked at the papers once with disgust, rolled them into a ball, and threw them away from him into a refuse carton. "Frig it. What's the sense thinking on them things?"
He looked older and more tired in that moment than when we came in. I said, "Sure, Sonny, sorry we bothered you."
"No trouble at all, Mr. Hammer. Come in for a shine any time."
On the street Velda said, "Pathetic, wasn't he?"
"Aren't they all?"
We waited there a few minutes trying to flag a cab, then walked two blocks before one cut over to our side and squealed to a stop. A blue panel truck almost caught him broadside, but the driver was used to those simple occupational hazards and didn't blink an eye.
I let Velda off at the office with instructions to get what she could from Pat concerning Basil Levitt and Kid Hand and to try to re-establish some old pipelines. If there were new faces showing in town like Jersey Toby said, there was a reason for it. There was a reason for two dead men and a murder attempt on me. There was a reason for an assassination layout with Sue Devon the target and somebody somewhere was going to know the answers.
When Velda Pot out I gave the cabbie Sim Torrence's Westchester address and sat back to try and think it out. Traffic was light on the ride north and didn't tighten up until we got to the upper end of Manhattan.
Then it was too thick. Just as the cab slowed for a light somebody outside let out a scream and I had time to turn my head, see the nose of a truck almost in the window, and threw myself across the seat as the cab took a tremendous jar that crushed in the side and sent glass and metal fragments ripping above my head. There was one awful moment as the cab tipped, rolled onto its side, and lay there in that almost total silence that follows the second after an accident.
Up front the cabbie moaned softly and I could smell the sharp odor of gasoline. Somebody already had the front door open and arms were reaching in for the driver. I helped lift him, crawled out the opening, and stood there in the crowd brushing myself off. A couple dozen people grouped around the driver, who seemed more shaken than hurt, and for a change a few were telling him they'd be willing to be witnesses. The driver of the truck had cut across and deliberately slammed into the cab like it was intentional or the driver was drunk.
But there wasn't any driver in the truck at all. Somebody said he had jumped out and gone down into a subway kiosk across the street and acted like he was hurt. He was holding his belly and stumbled as he ran. Then I noticed the truck. It was a blue panel job and almost identical to the one which almost nailed the cab when Velda and I first got in it.