“You win,” he said, “for now, Amsterdam. But remember this. You can go wrong on a deal like this. And I’ll be watching you. One phony step and I’ll pull you in, Standard or no Standard. And it’ll give me the greatest pleasure to watch you sweat it out behind bars. Now get the hell out of here before I lose my temper.”
I started for the door, feeling the knives from his eyes stabbing my back. He was standing in the same position when I turned his way. His entire staff joined him in the tableau, the group stiff and mad, to match the mood of their master. I looked them all over slowly, showing them my boyish grin.
“Just making sure I’ll recognize any ape that’s assigned to tail me,” I explained.
After which, I departed rapidly.
CHAPTER 5
I breathed easier out in the lobby. I leaned against a slab of marble and lit a cigarette and just sucked and blew for a while, letting the strain slide out of my muscles, letting the tension go from my stomach. And waiting for the tail McKegnie might send after me, from sheer force of habit.
Ten minutes went by. Nobody came out of Kay Randall’s apartment. There was a cop on duty near the fountain, a fat slob who seemed half asleep as he rocked and rolled on his heels. From where I stood, he couldn’t see me. I was behind an abutment in the wall, where the corridor to Kay’s flat began. But the lobby was wide open to my eyes.
I was about to take off when the blonde walked in.
She came through the door, moving casually. But when she saw the cop at the fountain, something happened to her grace and charm. She paused, jolted. She pretended to search through her purse for a key. She crossed the lobby, still putting on a big routine with her bag, ambling slowly my way, around the edge of the lobby, beyond the glare of the big candelabra, hugging the wall as though she might be a resident of the place, on her way upstairs and searching for her key.
She didn’t see me until she almost tripped over me.
I put out a hand and reached for her arm.
She was off and away before I could say a word to her. She had been headed in the direction of Kay’s corridor. Now she boldly crossed the lobby in front of the cop. She moved with a long and mannish stride, but there was plenty of swish and sex in her molded hips. She had on a fur neck-piece over a trim business suit, but you needed no X-ray eye to plumb beneath the tweedy tailoring and catch the full ripe figure beneath. She was through the door before I started after her.
I stepped out into the street. Her high heels clicked a mad tattoo as she beat it toward Second Avenue. The wind caught her furs and sailed them back across her shoulder. She fought the breeze, head down, hell bent to get away from me. I gave her a small lead and she reached Second Avenue on the run, crossed the gutter and slipped in behind the wheel of a green Caddy convertible. I ran across the street and grabbed for her door as she revved the motor. I grabbed air instead.
The Caddy pulled away with a muffled Bronx cheer.
I yelled a dirty name at her. My own car was three blocks away and the long line of parked, locked cars added to my frustration.
At this rate, the only thing I’d catch would be a bad cold.
Then I saw the cab and shouted him to a squealing stop. He rolled to the curb alongside the canopy of a big apartment hotel. And at that moment, a young punk with a crew cut stepped forward to take possession. I grabbed him by the seat of his college pants and jerked him back to the pavement. He landed on his pratt, all upset because his girl friend had seen the struggle. He came for me as I opened the cab door, calling me names that ruined my mother’s reputation. The cabby muttered a feeble line, trying to calm us. But I was in a hurry and in no mood for a school debate. I slammed the door and gave the lad the back of my hand. He staggered and rolled backward.
“Let’s see what you learned at driving school,” I told the cabby. “Uptown. Fast.”
That cab could have been an arrow, the way we shot away. I squinted at the name on the hacker’s identification card. Angelo Ladolce.
I said, “How are your eyes, Angelo? You got twenty-twenty vision for that green Caddy up the street?”
“I see it. Up at the stop light?”
“Follow it. But give it air.”
“What for am I rushing?” Angelo said.
“Relax, chum. I’m paying off for this ride and you’ve made yourself an extra sawbuck already. I’m a private cop, Angelo.”
“I’m with you,” Angelo said, and he meant it. He piloted his cab behind the Caddy, now a block ahead of us and moving smoothly through the canyoned streets.
“You loaded with gas?” I asked.
“You caught me coming out of the barn, mister.”
“How far can you cruise?”
“Plenty,” Angelo said. “You figuring on long distance?”
I handed him another sawbuck and enjoyed the quick flash of joy on his honest face. “That’s only another down payment,” I said. “You get twenty more when I tell you to stop.”
“For this kind of dough, I could tail a B-29.”
The Caddy turned its nose west on Eighty-Seventh Street and headed toward Central Park. “Stay a block behind her if you can,” I told Angelo. “From the way she’s horsing around, she’s not quite sure whether she’s being tailed yet.”
“You’re the backseat driver.”
I sat on the edge of the seat and kibitzed into Angelo’s ear. I told him exactly how to handle his buggy. Angelo gave me the look reserved for traffic cops. He did as he liked, and what he liked was perfect. He paced himself like a horse going over hurdles. Not too fast, not too slow, but with just enough speed to get a jump on the lights and keep his car at a respectable distance behind the Caddy.
The car ahead approached Fifth Avenue. A black cat decided that the garbage pails on the other side of the street held more succulent delicacies. The cat never got to taste them.
“Sie Maledette!” Angelo cried. “That was murder!”
Angelo was right. She had made no attempt to swerve away from the animal. This was a dame without pity. She must have made up her mind about us now. She was increasing her speed, anxious to lose us. She raced down Fifth Avenue and turned left into Central Park, her tires singing and squealing. Angelo followed at the same clip. We almost lost her around a curve in the park. We were caught between two hansoms. The horses behaved like Percherons, clopping along in the middle of the dark road. Angelo stampeded them over to the side with his horns cursing the drivers in fine and fancy Italian. The Caddy hissed and roared ahead of us. Then she was cutting out of the park and heading east again.
“Can you stop her?” I asked.
“You want me to wreck her?”
“Not if you can help it.”
“The way she drives, it’ll be tough,” Angelo said. “This dame drives like a man, mister.”
“Try to jerk her into the curb,” I yapped. “I’ll pay the damages.”
Angelo tried. But the dame outfoxed him, all the way. She whipped her sleek job eastward toward York Avenue. On York she swung up into the Nineties, handling the red lights as though they were Christmas ornaments. Desperation made her a menace now. She stopped flirting with the intersections and shot toward the East River Drive without a let-up in her madcap pace. The city around us was already half asleep. The road along the river loomed slick, clean and empty of all cops.
“She’s heading for the Triborough Bridge,” Angelo said. “What do I do now?”
“Follow her.”
The Triborough Bridge lay like a giant octopus in a blanket of fog. Early morning mists swirled over the rivers, rising and clinging to the great mass of metal that was the first bridge to the toll house. The looming colossus of steel seemed suspended in air, held up by nothing but the night below it. The lights on the road beyond traveled off into an infinity of gloom and miasmic vapors. It was a painter’s idea of a bridge, a painter who didn’t
quite know where he was going. He had created three steel arteries branching off in three different directions. They led to The Bronx, Queens and Randall’s Island. The big black arrow pointing to Randall’s Island stabbed me. It sent off sparks of anger, the hot reflex annoyance that comes with memory’s itch. Randall! Kay Randall! She was here again, with me in the cab, the last quick sight of her, on the bed, the knife in her breast and the red blood over her. She would stay with me, the bright horror of her image alive in my brain, until I caught the one who bad killed her.
Angelo slowed after the toll gate. Which way now? The Bronx? Maybe, but not likely. If she wanted to lose us, she would not backtrack into the city. That left Queens. They had built the highways skirting Queens for speed, and this was a fast broad in a faster car. She’d turn the roads into speedways and try to lose us out in the dim reaches of Long Island. I knew those roads, though; knew them well. In my old college days I had romanced my dates at the Roadside Rest, outside of Long Beach. The golf clubs in Westbury and Bethpage had seen me lately. And when an extra C note burned a hole in my pants I’d improve the breed at Roosevelt Raceway. If she wanted to play tag in Johnny Amsterdam’s private parlor then she’d be It before the sun came up.
“Head for Long Island!” I shouted to Angelo.
He turned up his brights and kept them pinned to the narrow concrete belt ahead of us. And after a while my hunch paid off. She was up there, a blur of green, buzzing toward the east. On the right, the New York skyline was a thin and nebulous, massive ridge against the black of night; blurred windows in the fog, a thousand thousand miles off in space. And straight ahead, the dark mouth of Grand Central Parkway made ready to swallow us.
The local flycops set the speed limit on the parkway at thirty-five miles an hour, but my dame was doing a fancy seventy. I knew it, because Angelo’s cab was beginning to quiver and bounce under the strain of the fantastic pace. During the day, the local cops would lie in wait for you. Tonight they must have all gone to a ball. The green Caddy cut around a crawling station wagon to the outer lane and stayed there, her wheels hugging the raised concrete strip. She knew these turns as well as I did.
And she was almost coasting up there.
She was easing her way at a speed calculated to give us encouragement. Angelo’s meter read seventy-five miles an hour. But I knew that Caddy could roll past ninety whenever she gave it the toe. She was planning a strategy, a game, I guessed, before she made her final move. She would be waiting for a certain turn off the highway. She would be skidding off into a Long Island village, trying to lose us in the quiet lanes.
“Can’t you get anything more out of this crate?” I asked.
“You need a rocket ship,” said Angelo.
“Okay. Make like one.”
“My foot is down all the way. This tub wasn’t built for tailing female space cadets. This is the limit now.”
We were moving no faster. I dug a cigarette out of my pocket and puffed the excitement of the chase out of my system. Angelo’s eyes were sliding my way on the rearview mirror, He felt the subtle change in my mood and took the cue to click on his car radio.
An early morning disc jockey faded in. It was hard to hear the music at first, but then the voice took hold; the throbbing, sexy voice of a torch singer. A familiar voice. A voice I had heard earlier today. It was Kay Randall!
Her ghost on wax. Her ghost in the air around me, riding with me in a race that could mean everything or nothing in the hunt for her killer. Kay was singing a corny love song to a guy, asking him what she did to make him sore. To me it sounded like Kay pleading for her life. I almost saw the bastard ripping the dress from her body to find the right spot for the knife. The ghost sang on, a mounting beat, a rhythm that throbbed to the pounding of my pulse, the hate in my soul.
“She’s going to turn off,” Angelo said.
“Where are we?”
“Coming in to Rockville Center.”
“Watch the exit here,” I shouted. “It’s an easy out. She can take it without letting up.”
She took it. She took it in a distant moaning and whining of her tires, the green Caddy a blur of movement up ahead, rimming the turn and snaking south. She would try to lose us now.
The winding road into Rockville Center is flanked on one side by a reservoir and the other by a state park. Down the black road we moved, Angelo driving dangerously now, to keep the two little red eyes on the tail of the Caddy in view. On Sunrise Highway she turned to the left and steamed ahead, through Rockville Center and Baldwin.
And then we were in Freeport and she was swinging south toward the Woodcleft Canal. I tapped Angelo on the shoulder.
“Slow down, chum,” I said. “We can’t lose her now.”
I was in familiar territory. The Woodcleft Canal dead-ended at the water’s edge. About a mile from the heart of Freeport, this street took on the character of an old-fashioned fishing village. Bait and tackle stores lined the road, lending an air of quaintness to the swank seafood establishments that attracted customers from all over the city. A billboard advertised the latest model Chris Craft. The dame in the Caddy would need a boat to lose me here.
I opened the cab window and breathed deeply of the salt air. We approached the water and we stopped there, at a crumbling dock that leaned crazily into the bay.
And then we lost her in the darkness.
“She came in here,” Angelo said.
“She must have floated out.”
“Not on wheels, she didn’t. Look up there.”
Angelo was right. The road ahead was a narrow winding path through tall grass and weeds, a muddy, rutted lane from which there was no returning. On either side of the path, an old boatyard closed in, the looming shadows of ancient craft rising up eerily to rim the lane with menace. Nothing stirred. Nor could we see far beyond the first turning up there. But our eyes could take us far enough to survey the inner twistings of that road. There would be only one way back. This way. In the distance, almost buried in the slight fog that swept in from the water, there stood a house.
“Let’s go in,” I said.
Angelo stepped on the gas without a word. The wheels sucked and slipped in the muck, rolling and skidding over the lumpy road. We slithered beyond the boatyard and came out on a sanded and hardened section of land. Here the going was easier. But there was no need to go any farther. Straight ahead, parked under a low tree, almost hidden in the foliage, was the Caddy.
“You want me to stick around?” Angelo asked.
“I’m riding home in that Caddy,” I said, and slipped him two more tens. Angelo thanked me and piloted his cab around the parking lot and down the rutted road toward the edge of the water.
Ahead of me was Mario’s.
Mario’s Shack squatted like a Bowery bum in a weedy lot, completely exposed to wind and rain and the never-ending drift of mists from over Freeport Bay. Its walls were weather-beaten a chipped and corroded color by the elements. Twenty years ago somebody had swabbed the exterior with paint, but only the peelings remained now. An eczema of paint. The wind had played catch with the shingles on the roof and only a few of them held on up there; the rest was boarded and slapped together with slats and morsels of assorted odds and ends, a nightmare of neglect and inefficiency. Against the edge of the roof, tipped crazily by the marauding winds, a five-foot neon sign blinked: ARIO’S SH CK—on and off, but mostly off, the letters glimmering weakly as the force of the wind renewed the contact. Down below, on eye level, two long and ugly windows had been permanently boarded up. People who visited Mario’s obviously didn’t go in for breathing in a big way. The shingle hanging from the door announced that Mario’s catered to ladies. Ladies like the broad in the green Caddy?
I pushed the door open and it squealed a whining complaint, the sound high and skittering in the wind. Beyond that sound, inside the shack, was only silence—a barrage of silence, an empty, su
cking silence. Every house owns its own brand of quiet, complete with an occasional creak or stirring to make it tolerable, but here nothing stirred. The door closed behind me. It cut off all sound of the sighing, softening breeze out there. For a moment the silence in Mario’s was sticky, the deep and soulless void of a perfect vacuum. But then I became aware of one sound. The sound of a bladder in an operating room, inhaling and exhaling. Suddenly I realized that I was listening to the sound of my own breathing.
An overhead fluorescent light turned the air into a fog of blue. A dozen bare wooden tables stood around the small dining room. Sawdust covered the floor, old and emitting an odor that spelled out the age of its debris. A yellow candle still burned on one lonely table, sending sad weaving shadows to the ceiling. This was a bar and grill designed for zombies. On the cracked walls, a galaxy of old pictures festooned the place. They were old burlesque photographs, colored by some lunatic and designed to melt the marrow of a man. Against the background of that crumby dining room they looked like cadavers advertising the embalmer’s art. And above and beyond the sight of these things, the deep and musty stench of the place tore at my nostrils. Somebody had breathed the life out of this air a century ago, and in its place left dry rot.
Mario’s obviously didn’t cater to the Cadillac trade.
I drifted toward the ancient bar on the right. A man came out of nowhere, on padded, soundless feet.
He walked behind the bar, a big man with the face of a pug who had lost one fight too many.
“The bar’s closed, mister.” He spoke in a thick-tongued growl, as friendly as a clout on the head. “We closed an hour ago.”
“I only want a quick one.”
He wiped his hands on a dirty apron and picked up a glass to examine it for flaws. He wiped it carefully with the cloth, treating it like a precious antique crystal. I let him play out his little drama of pretending not to notice me. When he satisfied himself about the glass, he placed it tenderly in the dirty rack behind him. He paused to light the stub of his cigar. He paused to puff it.
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