The Cutie (5 page)

“Waking you up,” I told him. “You want to get out of the tub now?”

“My shoes are ruined,” he said.

“Sorry. But I couldn’t wait around all day.”

“You didn’t have to ruin my shoes,” he said. He still didn’t recognize me.

I helped him out of the tub and went into the other room for some dry clothes for him. “Change into these,” I said. “And come out sober.”

He blinked at me, a thin, fortyish guy with strain lines on his forehead and around his mouth, shivering a little even though thermometers were blowing up all over the city. “Where were we last night?” he asked me.

“Heaven,” I told him. “Hurry up and get changed.”

I went back outside and closed the bathroom door behind me. There was a deck of cards scattered all over the table on the other side of the room, and I went over and played a hand of solitaire.

He came out after a while, dressed in dry pants and shirt, but barefoot. “What’s going on?” he asked me.

“You know who I am?”

“I don’t owe you any money, do I?”

I sighed. He was still way under. “Come on over and sit down,” I said. “We’ll play some gin rummy.”

“I got a sour taste,” he said.

“Come on, sit down.”

So he sat down, and I dealt a gin rummy hand, and he picked up the cards and looked at them for a while. He blinked a couple of times, looked at the cards some more, put them down, looked around the room, looked at the cards again, and finally looked at me. “Clay,” he said.

“Welcome home,” I said.

“What the hell happened?”

“I woke you up. I’m sorry, Junky, but I had to.”

“Woke me up?”

“When’d you go to sleep?”

“What time is it?”

I looked at my watch. “Quarter to five,” I told him.

“Tuesday?”

“Uh huh. Tuesday.”

“I came home about four.”

“That when you took the shot?”

“Yeah. I guess so.” He shook his head and winced, then pressed his palm against his forehead. “I got a hell of a headache,” he said.

“I’m sorry I had to do it, boy. You can take another in just a minute.”

“Jesus, my head hurts.”

“Junky, listen to me for a minute.”

He squinted at me from under his eyebrows. “What’s wrong, Clay?”

“You see Billy-Billy tonight?”

“Yeah, sure. Around eight, at the movie over at Avenue B and Fourth Street.”

“Not since then?”

“No. Why, what’s with Billy-Billy?”

“What kind of shape was he in when you saw him?”

He managed a lopsided kind of grin. “The shape I was in when you saw me,” he said. “Out of it. In the alley beside the movie.”

“That was at eight o’clock?”

“Yeah. Why? What’s wrong, Clay?”

“Billy-Billy got himself mixed up with a murder sometime after midnight.”

“Billy-Billy?”

“He didn’t come to see you an hour or two ago, did he?”

“I just got home at four o’clock, Clay.”

“Okay. He’s liable to come here anyway, pretty soon. If he does, you hold on to him, and call me. Right away. Okay?”

“Yeah, sure, Clay.”

“If it’s after nine o’clock, call me at Clancy Marshall’s office.”

“I’ll be sleeping at nine o’clock, Clay.”

“Yeah, I know. I’m sorry I had to wake you up.”

“Hell, that’s okay. I should of eaten something first anyway.” He grimaced again, and rubbed his forehead some more. Then he stopped and said, “Billy-Billy’s hot?”

“Right you are.”

“How hot, Clay?”

“Very.”

“Hot enough to be taken off the payroll, Clay? Because he’s a friend of mine, you know that. I don’t pull no Judas on him, I don’t hold him here for you to come down and bump him. Get somebody else for that, Clay. Billy-Billy’s my friend.”

“Don’t worry about it, Junky. You aren’t his only friend. I got orders to keep him safe and get him out of town.”

“How far out of town?”

“He isn’t going to get killed,” I said. I was getting annoyed. It wasn’t up to Junky Stein to decide what was going to happen to Billy-Billy.

“Okay,” he said. “If I see him, I’ll hold on to him.”

“Where else might he have gone? He’s hot and he knows he’s hot. He wants to hole up somewhere. Where would he go?”

“Beats me, Clay. Here, I guess. Or maybe he’s trying to get out of town by himself.”

“I doubt it. At least, I hope not. The law would get him for sure if he tried anything like that.”

“I just don’t know, Clay. He’d come here. I don’t know anybody else he’d go to at all.”

“None of his customers?”

“Hell, no.” He prodded at his forehead with shaky fingers. “There was a place he used to go every once in a while,” he said. “I don’t know where, though. It wasn’t a friend or anything like that, I don’t think.”

“What kind of place?”

“I don’t know. He said he wasn’t supposed to tell. He could only go there in the daytime, though, I know that much. He went there one night, and he came back without any money.”

“Money?”

“He’d get money at this place, wherever it was. I thought for a while he was maybe selling blood to one of the hospitals, something like that, but he’d get different amounts. He wouldn’t go very often, you know. Only if he was really in a bind for cash. Last time he went was a couple months ago, when you were down on him for some late payments. That’s where he got the dough.”

“You don’t know where this place is, or anything about it?”

“I’m sorry, Clay. All he’d say was that he wasn’t supposed to tell. Even if he was high, he’d keep a tight lip on that one thing.”

“And there’s no place else he’d go?”

“Not that I know of, Clay.”

“Okay. Can you stay away from the needle for a while? Just to see if he shows up.”

“My head hurts like hell, Clay.”

“Try, will you? I’ve got to get that boy found.”

“I don’t promise nothing, Clay. Look.” He held out his hands and let me watch them shake. “See?”

“Okay, I’ve got a better idea. You mind if somebody else stays here for a while?”

“Hell, no.”

“Okay. Hold on.”

I went over to the telephone and dialed a guy named Jack Eberhardt. He’s mainly a muscle boy, but he could also be useful now, sitting around and waiting for Billy-Billy to show up. And he doesn’t touch the needle.

He’d been asleep, but he said he’d be right down, once I’d explained what I wanted. I hung up, and turned back to Junky. “Did you hear?”

“Sure. I don’t think I know the guy.”

“Big,” I said. “Black hair. Broken nose.”

“Okay.”

“Stay with it till he gets here, okay?”

“Okay, Clay.”

“I’m sorry I had to wake you up.”

“That’s okay. Billy-Billy’s a friend of mine.”

“I’ll see you around, Junky.”

“Sure thing.”

When I left, he was rubbing his forehead again, squinting at the face-down gin rummy hand.

The hubcaps were still on the car, which was something of a surprise. I climbed in and sat there for a minute, thinking things out. Billy-Billy didn’t have any other friends, except for Junky Stein and whoever the guy was in Europe. And maybe this money source Junky’d told me about. I’d have to see what I could find out about that.

He might have gone to one of his customers, but I doubted it. A pusher doesn’t put himself in debt to a customer. It made sense for him to come to see Junky, and that was the only thing that made sense.

Unless the cops had him.

That was a cute thought. I hit the ignition, and drove back uptown. It was almost six o’clock, and rapidly becoming light. The streets had that tired gray look which is a combination of too late at night and too early in the morning. A few people were walking along the broad sidewalks of Third Avenue, looking worn and tired. Traffic was light, most of it cabs. It was six o’clock of a hot Tuesday morning in New York, and the only happy people were asleep.

I drove all the way up the long staggered-light stretch of Third Avenue to 86th Street, turned left, and went over and through Central Park, over to Columbus Avenue, and down to the parking garage.

The Puerto Rican kid was tired, but still grinning. “Gonna be a hot day,” he said.

“Too hot to sleep,” I said. This kid wouldn’t have any air conditioning in his half a room.

His grin broadened. “I go downa 42nd Street,” he said. “Thirty cents for the movies. Cooled by refrigeration.”

“Shrewd boy.”

“Thinkin’ alla time,” he said. “Maybe you could use a shrewd boy, huh?”

I shook my head. “Sorry, kid. I’m not the personnel manager.”

“I drive like hell,” he told me.

I got out of the car. “Don’t let your boss hear you say that.”

“You keep me in mind, okay?”

“Sure thing.”

I left the garage and walked on down the block toward my building. I knew what the kid had in mind. Suits like mine, a hot car like mine, an apartment like mine, women like mine. He thought he could get the same thing, if he was in the organization. He didn’t know he was better off where he was. I could get him a job, sure. Driving cigarettes to Canada and whiskey back, if he wanted to drive. Eighty a week and expenses, back and forth between Montreal and Washington, D.C., where you can get your cigarettes cheaper, without any state taxes to pay. Or maybe transporting narcotics up from Baltimore and Savannah. He was too light for a muscle job, too young for an important job, too Puerto Rican to get any advancement. Eighty a week and expenses, and the odds favoring him for a conviction and a jail term within two years. I could get him a job, if he really wanted. And he’d still sleep in the 42nd Street theaters during heat waves.

As I went into the building and headed for the elevator, I decided to let it ride this time. If he asked again, I’d set him up to talk to somebody. It isn’t my job to recruit, but it isn’t my job to turn recruits away, either.

The apartment was lovely and cool, and I just stood in the living room and breathed for a while. I was a little fuzzy in the head, from no sleep and too much heat, but the cool air helped a lot.

I went over to the telephone and called a cop, a precinct plainclothesman named Fred Maine. This was not a Grimes sort of cop. This was a bought sort of cop. I knew he worked an odd shift, getting off at four in the morning, which meant he should just be getting home now. He answered on the third ring. I told him who I was and that I wanted some information, and he said to hold on while he got a pencil. I held on.

He came back a minute later and said, “Shoot.”

“A woman was stabbed tonight,” I said. Then I glanced at the window. “Last night, I mean. In the living room of her apartment, somewhere near Central Park. The cops got to the place somewhere around two o’clock. They think they know who did it, but they’re wrong. Can you get the story for me?”

“That isn’t much to go on, Clay,” he said doubtfully. “Women are getting stabbed in their living rooms all the time. It’s like the common cold. But I’ll see what I can do. Call you back in five minutes. You at home?”

“Uh huh.”

“You want the name and address, right?”

“Right. I also want to know how the law got there so fast. And I’m also anxious to find out if they made an arrest yet or not.”

“I’ll call you back,” he said. “Five minutes.”

Actually, it was six minutes, during which time I lit a cigarette, loosened my tie and untied my shoelaces.

“This is Fred again,” he said. “I told you it wasn’t going to be easy. Between twelve midnight and three-thirty this morning, four women were knifed in four apartment living rooms in four sections of Manhattan.”

“Great,” I said. “The cops got any hot suspects for any of them?”

“Two. One on the Lower West Side, they got the husband for. The other one, Upper East, that’s probably the one you want. They’re looking for a pusher named Cantell.”

“That’s the one,” I said. “They got him yet?”

“Not yet.” He gave me the story. The dead woman’s name was Mavis St. Paul, and the address was on East 63rd Street, near the park. Mavis St. Paul had been twenty-five, blond, five foot eight, and she listed her occupation as “model.” She wasn’t registered with any of the modeling agencies, at least not that the cops knew of. I could draw my own conclusions.

“This Cantell,” said Fred. “He’s a pusher and he’s also a user. The theory is, he tried to burglarize her place and got panicky when she caught him at it. So he knifed her and ran. Left his hat behind, with his name and address in it.”

“He’s a smart boy,” I said. “How did the cops manage to get to the place so fast?”

“Phone tip. Anonymous. You know, the solid citizen who’s afraid he’ll have to take a half-day off from work to be a witness.”

“A phone tip, huh?” That sounded like my not-so-solid citizen, the guy who had left Billy-Billy behind to take his rap for him. Went to a phone booth, called the cops, and expected them to get there before Billy-Billy woke up. If they had, I wouldn’t be awake right now, talking to bought cops.

“Let me know,” I said, “if they get Cantell.”

“Sure thing, Clay. And that shouldn’t take long.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Homicide East is on the case,” he told me. “Somebody upstairs is making a squawk about this one. It’s hot.”

“What the hell for?”

“Beats me, Clay. They don’t tell me why, they just tell me do.”

“Keep me posted,” I said, and made another fast phone call, this one to Archie Freihofer, a fellow employee of Ed Ganolese’s, party-girl division. He answered the phone at the sixth ring, and he came on sounding like butter. He always sounds like butter. I told him who I was, and said, “Does the name Mavis St. Paul ring any bells?”

A few seconds’ silence, and he said, “Sorry. No. Should I know her?”

“Somebody must,” I told him. “She lived on East 63rd. Occupation, model.”

He snickered.

“Can you find out who paid the rent?” I asked him.

“I’ll ask around. What was the name again?”

“Mavis St. Paul.”

“Mavis?” He snickered again. “I’ll look for a broad named Mildred who came from St. Paul.”

“You can reach me at my place until nine,” I told him. “After that, I’ll be at Clancy Marshall’s office.”