"Drop by?" blurted a guy of twenty-eight, with the acne of a thirteen-year-old. "Don't you even wanna celebrate your champeenship?"
And then Barney's face lit up; the door had opened and Winch was there, escorting a plump, beatifically smiling late-middle-aged woman in a blue dress; behind wire-frame glasses her eyes were Barney's.
"Ma!" Barney shouted.
He ran to her. hugged her. tears running down both their faces.
Then he held her at arm's length and looked at her. "It's Shabbes, Ma! How'd you set here?"
Solemnly, she said, "It's Shabbes, Beryl," which was Barney's real name, making with an elaborate, Jewish-mother shrug. "I walked. What else?"
"It's five miles!"
"I had to come. You see, I knew if I come to see you fight, you win."
"But you hate fighting. Ma."
"Sitting home waiting, I hate. Besides, I figure if you can take the punishment, I can take it."
"Anything you say, Ma. Nate, come over here!"
I went over. "Hello, Mrs. Ross. Why don't you let me drive you home? You can make an exception on riding on the Shabbes. Sick people do it."
"Aren't you the smart Shabbes goy? Do I look sick?"
Barney said, "Nate's right. Ma. You'll collapse or something, and then you will be sick. Let me drive you."
"No."
"All right." Barney said. "I'll walk home with you."
Barney's West Side pals, listening to all this, protested: what about the party?"
"I'll be there later." Barney promised them. "First I got to walk my girl home."
And he did; all five miles, with his Ma on his arm.
Or so he said; I didn't walk along with 'em. I wasn't crazy, and I wasn't near as Jewish.
I went upstairs and the windup fight was over and folks were wandering up the ramps out into the lobby. They were all wound up. still caught up in the Ross-Canzoneri bout, some of them arguing the decision, most of them saying it was a fight they'd tell their grandkids about, and as I was going down the ramp into the gray cement lobby. I saw him.
Dipper Cooney.
He was dressed like a college kid: sweater, slacks- that was his game. That was how he turned looking twenty when he was nearly twice that into a living; red-haired, freckle-faced, friendly, he did not look like a pickpocket.
But brother, was he.
I moved through the crowd as quickly as I could without attracting attention or getting swung at; Dipper was following a guy and studying him to make the hook, and I had time.
Then about ten feet from him I got overanxious, and pushed past a guy, who pushed back and said. "Hey! Watch it, bub!"
And Dipper turned, and saw me.
And recognized me.
To him, I supposed, I was still just a pickpocket detail cop. And he could see I was moving toward him, fast enough, furious enough, to have caused a commotion (goddamnit!), and he started pushing through the crowd himself, and was out the door and into the starry night.
I followed him, and he left an angry trail of people, as the fans in front of the stadium, lingering, chatting about the great fight, were in both our ways, and got pushed out of it, and we had to be well away from the stadium and into the residential district surrounding it before either of us could really run.
And one thing a pickpocket can do is run.
Cooney, who'd kept his weight down to help with the college kid pose, was light, small, wiry, and he had half a block on me.
But I wanted him bad.
I ran full throttle after him. feeling like a track star, and I shouted, "Cooney! I'm not the cops anymore!"
He kept running.
So did I.
"Cooney!" I yelled. "I just want to talk, goddamnit," and that last was just to myself; my side was starting to ache. I never ran this fast, this far, before.
The neighborhood was mostly two-flats and row houses, and it was almost midnight, so we were alone on our sidewalk track, nothing, nobody in our way, and I began to cut the distance, and then he was just out in front of me and I threw myself at him, tackled the son of a bitch, and we skidded, skinned ourselves on the sidewalk and landed in a pile.
I didn't have a gun on me, but that was okay: pickpockets rarely cany guns, as it takes up stash space and weights 'em down. And I was bigger than this forty-year-old college kid, and I crawled on top of him like a rapist and grabbed the front of his shirt and the two green eyes in the midst of that freckle-face looked up at me round as the colored kid's in Our Gang.
"What the fuck you want. Heller?" he managed. He was panting. So was 1.1 hoped my breath was better than his. "You ain't no goddamn cop no more."
"You know about that?"
"I can read. I seen the papers."
"Then why'd you run?"
He thought about it. "Force of habit. Let me up."
"No."
"I won't run. I'm winded. Heller. Let me up."
Cautiously, I did. But I kept the front of his shirt wadded in one fist.
"I just want some answers," I said.
"You still sound like a cop."
"I'm private."
That stirred a memory. "Oh. Okay. Yeah, maybe I remember reading that. You're a private dick now."
"Right. And this isn't police business."
We were on a side street; a car angled down it somebody leaving the stadium, probably. I let go of his shirt, so it wouldn't attract the driver's attention. Cooney thought about running. Just thought.
"In fact," I said, "there's a double sawbuck in it for you."
His attitude changed; running was now out of the question. "You're kiddin'? What do I know that's worth a double sawbuck to you, Heller?"
"It's just a case I'm working, a missing persons case."
"Yeah?"
"Kid named Jimmy Beame. His sister and father are looking for him."
He rubbed his chin. "I think I know a Jimmy Beame."
"Give."
"You give. You were talkin' double sawbuck a minute ago."
I dug in my pocket and got out a ten; gave it to him.
"You can have another." I said, "if I like what you have to say."
"Fair enough." he shrugged. "I was in the Tri-Cities. must've been a year and a half or two ago. This kid Beame was thick with the local mugs. Small-timers… but they were connected to some Chicago folks."
"Go on."
"This kid wanted in."
"In where?"
"The mob. He wanted some fast money, he said. He'd been bootlegging and such- some of it in Chicago, he said, for these Tri-Cities mugs. But he wanted something bigger."
"What exactly?"
"He wanted to work with the Capone gang."
"What? He was just a hick kid!"
"Yeah, but he'd been around a bit. Had a gun on him, when he traveled with me. And I helped him out: he paid me to."
"So what did you do for him?"
"How 'bout the other sawbuck?"
I grabbed his shirt again. Another car came rolling down the side street and I let go.
"Easy," he said, brushing his college sweater off.
"What did you do for him?"
"I called Nitti. I done work for him, you know, time to time. Said the kid was all right, and Nitti said send him, and I gave the kid the address and that's that."
"That's that?"
"That's that," Cooney shrugged, and the car going by slowed as the driver extended an arm with a gun in its fist and I dove for the bushes as three silenced bullets danced across Cooney's chest.
Then the car was gone, and so was Cooney.
Night at the fair.
White lights bouncing off colored surfaces, colored lights careening off white surfaces, the modernistic lines of buildings brought out by tricks of incandescent bulbs, arc lights, neon tubes, a night aglow with pastels, like some freak occurrence, like a diamond necklace caught fire and flung along the lakeshore.