“We’ve had a series of 605’s on the upper East Side, all antique stores. Nothing so far, but we’ve been checking out the dockets for anything similar in other precincts, maybe give us a lead. You listed one a couple months back, lower Fifth, so I thought I’d see if you’d come up with anything.”
Hagburg’s brow furrowed in concentration and he massaged several of his chins with a pudgy hand.
“Antiques, lower Fifth…” A gleam of recognition sprang into his small eyes. “Oh, yeah, Pickett’s place on West Twelfth.” He shook his head. “I don’t think there’s anything for you there. Nothing professional, most likely a nut case. He attacked the owner and grabbed some ashtray or something, nothing valuable. Broad daylight too, it wasn’t planned or nothing.”
“Is it still open?”
“Nah, I think we closed it about six weeks back. We didn’t have nothing to go on, no hard make, nobody around who’d seen him get away. A dead end.”
“No prints on record?”
Hagburg shifted in his chair, his eyes abruptly avoiding mine.
“Well, you know, Lieutenant, on a thing like that, minor assault, petty theft, with so much hard stuff hitting the fan…”
I sighed. I did know.
“You didn’t dust.”
Hagburg shook his head.
“Did you check your sources?”
He squirmed again.
“All he got away with was one fuckin’ ashtray, Lieutenant, worth maybe sixty bucks, I mean it was more shopliftin’ than a heist and I figured he wouldn’t know who to fence it with even if he wanted to. The guy was mental, it sounded like, and we got so much here…”
I hadn’t really expected anything more.
“Okay, Sergeant, relax, I’m not doing an efficiency. But there could still be a tie-up.”
Hagburg didn’t look interested one way or another now I’d let him off the hook.
“Yeah? Maybe.”
“That’s why I want your sources.”
He looked up sharply.
“Hey, now wait a minute, Lieutenant…”
Every cop guards his personal informers like the crown jewels, but I wasn’t in the mood to swallow any shit.
“That way I can mention your assistance in my report, Sergeant.” I spoke slowly, meaningfully. “And I wouldn’t have to mention anything else.”
Hagburg glared at me, but at least he knew when he was beaten.
“Awright, awright. The best guy for you is Pinky Larsen. What he don’t know around here, nobody does.” He scribbled something on a lined yellow pad, tore the page off and handed it to me. “Here’s where you can reach him, but play it cool, he wouldn’t last long if his friends knew he was on the vine. And don’t screw me up with him, either.”
I pocketed the paper.
“You got anything else?”
“Nothing that’s not in my report.” He regarded me resentfully. “But I’m telling you, Lieutenant, it’s a dead end, you’ll never get anything, not after all this time.”
I couldn’t disagree with him, so I got up and left.
Records was in the basement, a windowless plywood-partitioned room stuffed with puke-green metal file cabinets. A floor fan feebly stirred the damp air and the whole place smelled clammy as a tomb. A middle-aged policewoman with a not-so-faint moustache sat behind a desk, oval patches of sweat ink-blotting from under the arms of her pale blue tunic. She grimaced when I identified myself.
“We sent over everything we had on Duncan, Lieutenant, I don’t see what more…”
“I’m here to see Fiske,” I said, and her mouth softened into a scowl.
“He’s not here.” The fact seemed to please her.
“Where can I find him?”
“You tell me, Lieutenant, I haven’t seen him since yesterday.” The moustache quivered indignantly. “I’ve had to carry his case load for two days now.”
“Did he report sick?”
“The bastard hasn’t called in at all. When he does, he’s going to get quite a reception, believe me. He and his friends can enjoy their binge, but when he gets back he’ll be on the carpet, I can tell you…”
“What friends?”
“The two men he left here with. I should just call up his roommate and let him know, he’s a jealous type and you can bet…”
The room felt suddenly colder.
“Who were these two guys? Precinct cops, friends…”
She shook her head.
“I’d never seen them before. He was going out with them when I got back from delivering some files upstairs.” She sniffed. “A cut above his usual type, I must say, respectably dressed at least…”
I fought down the thoughts, keeping my voice steady.
“Could you give me Fiske’s home address and phone number? It’s important I get in touch with him.”
She flipped through a circular card index.
“25 Jane Street, Apartment 2-D, Chelsea 3-3299. But he’s not there. The switchboard’s been trying to get hold of him all day, no answer. His roommate’s home after six, though, he works somewhere uptown. If you find Ernest, you can tell him for me…”
I left, thinking rapidly. It didn’t have to mean anything, Fiske could just be out on a bender. I kept on telling myself that all the way to the car.
Macri must have caught my mood, and he stayed mercifully silent as I inched through the congealed traffic crosstown to Avenue of the Liberation and over to Fifth. For the first time that day my luck was in and there was a parking spot on the corner of Thirteenth, facing a row of pay phones. I gave the keys to Macri, scrabbled through my pockets for some pfennigs, and dialed Fiske’s number. No answer. I let it ring nine, ten times, then took out the paper Hagburg gave me. Pinky Larsen answered on the second ring, and I introduced myself.
“So?” His voice was wary.
“Fred Hagburg said you could help me out on something. When can we get together?”
There was a loud silence on the other end.
“I said…”
“Yeah, I heard you the first time. Look, Lieutenant, I ain’t no friggin’ information desk. That arrangement between me and Fred, that was private, he shouldn’ta gave you my number.”
I forced a conciliatory tone.
“Look Larsen, this is only routine, nothing that’ll put any heat on you. Just a few minutes of talk, that’s all it’ll take. And you never know when you might need a friend uptown.”
He snorted.
“What I don’t need is no more enemies. All right Lieutenant, I’m gonna be at the fights tonight at the Garden. I’ll leave off a ticket for you at the Fifty-third Street window. Get there before the main bout.”
Macri was waiting outside the store, which was grander than I’d expected, occupying the entire streetfront of a modern and obviously expensive apartment building. There was no sign outside, just a discreet, highly polished brass plate beside the door, “Pickett & Villiers, Antiques & Objets d’Art.” There wasn’t much to see in the large display window, just lots of cream satin hangings back-dropping a few spindly chairs and tables and something that looked like a jeweled Easter egg. Inside, the place was even classier, thick Persian carpets, subdued lighting, a subtle but pervasive aroma of sandalwood and old leather clinging in the air like incense. Somehow I’d come to think of Pickett as a storefront junk dealer, but I couldn’t have been more wrong.
As we stood in the areaway an elegantly slender young man materialized out of the gloom and minced over to us, his hands folded in front of him like a votary in some Odinist temple.
“May I be of service, gentlemen?”
The voice was hushed.
“We’d like to see Mr. Pickett.”
“Ahhhh.” His tone seemed to congratulate us on our good taste. “He is occupied right now, but if you’d care to wait…”
I nodded, and he detached himself and pranced to the back of the room. I looked around, scanning the subtly lighted oils on the walls, the darkly gleaming furniture and display cases of jewels, china and crystal. The only other customer was a stout blue-rinsed matron browsing along the silver counters, swathed in a floor-length chinchilla coat that was twenty thousand marks if a pfennig. Her picanniny, one of the few I’d seen since the labs made them commercially available, pranced on its leash, gurgling excitedly in little drooling sputters. As she passed us it stopped and sniffed at my trouser leg, and I could see the heat stitches of the lobo trepanning across the kinky curls and the puckered white scar of the tracheotomy like a pale half-moon on the black throat. I tried to see if the thing was spayed but she’d dressed it up in silver lame pantaloons and a little brocaded vest. It started to snuffle up to Macri but he lashed out with his foot and it scampered away, mewling in terror. The old broad cast us a filthy look and patted it consolingly, whispering little endearments, before exiting with a final glare in our direction.