around or you’ll wind up in court. Go home. Get a job selling real estate. Shoot a few baskets. Make another kid. Otherwise the ones you have will wake up one of these mornings to an explosion and the Medical Examiner’s staff will have to come around and scrape you off the ceiling of your garage. Maybe your wife will be up there with you, or one of the kids. Bombs are an equal opportunity destroyer.”
“You’re letting me go?”
I hadn’t gotten through to him. You never do when they’re that age. I lifted my glass from the nightstand and gulped. The liquor had gone flat, like my brain. “What do you want, dinner? Don’t forget your coat.”
He stood there a moment longer, fidgeting, then turned and left. Back to report. I heard his wheels tearing hell out of my lawn as he backed around the Cutlass.
You never know whether it’s better to let a guy like that go or to turn him over to the cops. As often as I’d seen the picture, I never could remember if it was priest Pat O’Brien or gangster Jimmy Cagney who as a kid got collared and sent to the reform school in Angels with Dirty Faces , but I knew it had a lot to do with how each of them turned out. Not that I had any choice, with my description on every police radio between here and Canada.
The suitcase was a neon sign. I put it away and changed my clothes, choosing the suit that didn’t wrinkle easily. The gun and holster went onto a different belt. Then I called for a taxi and left the address of the bar around the corner. The first thought the cops would have after finding my car here and me gone would be to call the cab companies. Their having to sift through all the fares coming from the busy nightstop might buy me a few hours’ sleep. I grabbed my coat and hat, made sure that Gold had remembered his coat, dropped a razor and a new tube of shaving cream into the pocket, then locked up and legged it to the bar, feeling as inconspicuous as an orangutan in Hudson’s lingerie department.
12
T HE MOTEL ROOM had a working radio, which at fifty dollars a night was a real bargain. The news reports that night spent a lot of time on tornado damage in northern Monroe County and no time at all on Krim’s murder. A sniper had put a bullet through the windshield of a steelhauler’s rig from an overpass above the John Lodge late that afternoon. No one was hurt, and the culprit was gone by the time the cops arrived.
The next morning, after I had shaken the moss out of my head, they started off with the killing at The Crescent. Dave the cop was wrong. Someone had made the connection between Jefferson and Krim, and the airwaves crackled with speculation over whether the murders had something to do with the impending strike. Phil Montana was unavailable for comment. The police had no suspects as yet and were proceeding on the assumption that robbery was the motive. They said. I turned off the radio and stumbled into the bathroom.
I came out toweling my head, sat down next to the telephone and dialed Barry Stackpole’s number at the News. I’d heard he was back in town after negotiations to take his crime column to network television had fallen through. A copy boy answered and told me Stackpole had left the night before to cover the jury-tampering trial of a former Detroit Mafia chief in New Orleans. I thanked him, thumbed down the plunger, and tried Getner at the Free Press. He was in.
“Ted, this is Amos Walker. What have the cops dug up on the killing?”
“Which one, peeper?” He didn’t like me much, but he never forgot a favor and he owed me one. “We get several hundred a year. I think. The cops don’t furnish body counts no more.”
He hadn’t heard. Well, it was early. “A guy named Krim, over at a place called The Crescent on Cass. Somebody didn’t like the shape of his skull and made some modifications. You haven’t got anything on it?”
“Oh, that. I got everything there is. What you want to know?”
He didn’t have everything or
“You’re letting me go?”
I hadn’t gotten through to him. You never do when they’re that age. I lifted my glass from the nightstand and gulped. The liquor had gone flat, like my brain. “What do you want, dinner? Don’t forget your coat.”
He stood there a moment longer, fidgeting, then turned and left. Back to report. I heard his wheels tearing hell out of my lawn as he backed around the Cutlass.
You never know whether it’s better to let a guy like that go or to turn him over to the cops. As often as I’d seen the picture, I never could remember if it was priest Pat O’Brien or gangster Jimmy Cagney who as a kid got collared and sent to the reform school in Angels with Dirty Faces , but I knew it had a lot to do with how each of them turned out. Not that I had any choice, with my description on every police radio between here and Canada.
The suitcase was a neon sign. I put it away and changed my clothes, choosing the suit that didn’t wrinkle easily. The gun and holster went onto a different belt. Then I called for a taxi and left the address of the bar around the corner. The first thought the cops would have after finding my car here and me gone would be to call the cab companies. Their having to sift through all the fares coming from the busy nightstop might buy me a few hours’ sleep. I grabbed my coat and hat, made sure that Gold had remembered his coat, dropped a razor and a new tube of shaving cream into the pocket, then locked up and legged it to the bar, feeling as inconspicuous as an orangutan in Hudson’s lingerie department.
12
T HE MOTEL ROOM had a working radio, which at fifty dollars a night was a real bargain. The news reports that night spent a lot of time on tornado damage in northern Monroe County and no time at all on Krim’s murder. A sniper had put a bullet through the windshield of a steelhauler’s rig from an overpass above the John Lodge late that afternoon. No one was hurt, and the culprit was gone by the time the cops arrived.
The next morning, after I had shaken the moss out of my head, they started off with the killing at The Crescent. Dave the cop was wrong. Someone had made the connection between Jefferson and Krim, and the airwaves crackled with speculation over whether the murders had something to do with the impending strike. Phil Montana was unavailable for comment. The police had no suspects as yet and were proceeding on the assumption that robbery was the motive. They said. I turned off the radio and stumbled into the bathroom.
I came out toweling my head, sat down next to the telephone and dialed Barry Stackpole’s number at the News. I’d heard he was back in town after negotiations to take his crime column to network television had fallen through. A copy boy answered and told me Stackpole had left the night before to cover the jury-tampering trial of a former Detroit Mafia chief in New Orleans. I thanked him, thumbed down the plunger, and tried Getner at the Free Press. He was in.
“Ted, this is Amos Walker. What have the cops dug up on the killing?”
“Which one, peeper?” He didn’t like me much, but he never forgot a favor and he owed me one. “We get several hundred a year. I think. The cops don’t furnish body counts no more.”
He hadn’t heard. Well, it was early. “A guy named Krim, over at a place called The Crescent on Cass. Somebody didn’t like the shape of his skull and made some modifications. You haven’t got anything on it?”
“Oh, that. I got everything there is. What you want to know?”
He didn’t have everything or
Similar Books
