Dark Maze

by Thomas Adcock

  “All right, all right,” I said. “I’ll take your drill. Let me in.”

  A man’s voice behind her said, “Go on. He can show us once he’s through the door.”

  The music started up again and I stepped into a foyer fashioned out of plywood walls. The man behind her turned out to be Waldo, the professional regurgitator. He was holding a drink that looked to be rum and coke.

  “I seen you earlier, out on the boardwalk,” Waldo said pleasantly. “You was with that very good-looking black lady. Where’d she go?”

  “She went home.”

  “Tough luck,” Waldo said. He pointed a thumb at cupcake eyes and said, “This here’s Evie. You got to show her what you’re carrying.”

  I opened my windbreaker and pulled the .38 out from the holster and emptied the magazine, then gave it to Evie after putting the bullets in my pants pocket. “Where are you going to check it?” I asked.

  There was a cabinet on one of the plywood walls and Evie opened up its padlock and put it on a shelf. She said, “You carrying anything else?”

  I had a .22 Beretta pistol strapped on my ankle and debated with myself over the pros and cons of an honest response. Noticing that the cabinet was full of sidearms, my decision tilted toward honesty. I unstrapped the Beretta and gave it to Evie. She put it up on the shelf with my .38, closed the cabinet and locked it.

  “Okay, come on in,” Waldo said.

  I followed Waldo and Evie through the foyer into a single large room full of chairs and low tables with dim lights on top, and drinks and ashtrays. I saw the boardwalk barker at one of the tables. He had his hand on the nice-looking knee of Sparkle the snake charmer and she was laughing. I did not see her python.

  The Benny Goodman tunes were coming from a big floor model Atwater-Kent radio like my mother used to have. This was next to a bar along the back wall, tended by the small dark man from the B&B Carousell; when I recognized him, he nodded at me the way he had when Ruby and I passed him all those times going round and around.

  Four guys were playing cards at a large table in the corner. There were poker chips piled up in front of them and they all smoked cigars. A couple of women played mah-jongg in another corner table. Everybody else was scattered around drinking and talking.

  I felt something on my leg.

  “Welcome to the Carny Club.”

  The voice belonged to Big Stuff, who had come up behind me and pulled my pant leg. He had changed out of his white jumpsuit and now wore a blue blazer and a purple necktie. I noticed how everybody else was dressed for a nightclub and felt suddenly a little sloppy.

  “You have quite a way of sneaking up on a guy,” I said to Big Stuff, looking down at him.

  “I’m not walking around at your eye level,” he said. Then, “You’re a little late, but I guess prob’ly you had trouble finding us.”

  “All the street lamps are out,” I said.

  Waldo explained, “The crews that push all the crack around this neighborhood, they shoot them out. The city’s about given up trying to replace the lights.”

  “Say, you want a drink?” Big Stuff asked.

  I asked for a Johnnie Walker red in a big glass with a few ice cubes, and Evie went off to the bar to get it.

  “Come on over here and we’ll start talking,” said Big Stuff.

  Waldo and Big Stuff and I sat on three chairs out of four that were circled around a beat-up coffee table. The other chair was for Evie.

  “First I should tell you, Hockaday, that this here’s an unlicensed social club which I am going to assume you don’t care nothing about seeing as how you’re after bigger crimes,” Big Stuff said. “So, that’s right, ain’t it?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Okay, good. Now, you’re after Picasso, right?”

  “I want to talk to him.”

  “And you’re paying for information as to his whereabouts, right?”

  “Right.”

  “See, Waldo,” Big Stuff said, “I told you.”

  Evie handed me the Johnnie Walker and sat down.’

  “You didn’t miss nothing yet,” Big Stuff told her.

  “Supposing we get down to it, whatever it is?” I said. “I’ve got a long ride back into the city ahead of me.”

  “This afternoon, what you said about Picasso—I liked it,” Big Stuff said.

  “What?”

  “You said you thought it would be too bad if all people said about him was he came, he went and who cares. I told Waldo here, and he told Evie.”

  “Do you know where Picasso is?”

  “We think Picasso is a great artist,” Evie said, “the best painter on the boardwalk. He’s had a lot of trouble the past year, and now the cops and the newspapers are after him.”

  “And we’re not saying he’s your chamber of commerce type of guy,” Waldo said, taking over from Evie. “But we’re saying he’s got rights, like even the big shots. Which includes the fact that since nobody’s got any proof he’s guilty he’s still an innocent man.”

  Big Stuff asked me, “You think he done those murders?”

  What I thought was, these three were coming at me sideways for reasons of their own that I would probably not determine tonight. I figured the best way of getting anything at all useful to me was to move sideways myself.

  So I ignored Big Stuff like he had ignored me when I asked him if he knew where Picasso was. I asked Waldo, “How do you do that swallowing number with the mouse?”

  “I pull out the claws and the teeth and then I soak him in a little butter and olive oil and he goes down easier than anything,” Waldo said. “Also he comes up real easy since he’s so anxious to get air he’s helping me and I don’t have to use half the muscles I got to use with coins or like that.”

  Big Stuff said, “You didn’t answer me, Hockaday.”

  “You didn’t answer me,” I said.

  “We don’t know where Picasso is,” Evie said. “None of us has seen him since he left Coney. You heard about how they put him out over at the Seashore?”

  “I did.”

  “Well, that was better than a year ago,” Evie said, “and then Picasso disappeared off the face of the earth. All we know is there’s all this stuff about him in the newspapers and on the TV and radio, with the murders and all …”

  Waldo broke in. “And then Big Stuff tells us that you were saying to him this afternoon how you recently talked to him.”

  “Is he all right?” Evie asked.

  It suddenly came to me where I had seen her before. “You run that candy stand at the subway station, right?” I asked her.

  “Yeah. Philips Salt Water Taffee and Ka-Ra-Me-La,” she said. “I remember you from a few days ago. You and the black lady. She’s pretty. She ain’t a cop, is she?”

  “No.”

  “What is she, an actress?”

  “Yes.”

  “I thought so. Didn’t I tell you, Waldo?”

  Big Stuff cut in. “What’d you talk about with Picasso?” he asked me.

  Figuring they might possibly be shocked into revealing something about their motives in inviting me to have a free drink at the Carny Club, I said, “Oh, he was telling me how he wanted to kill somebody.”

  “How come you didn’t just put him in the trap right when he told you that?” Big Stuff asked.

  Evie answered for me. “Because, you little stupe, if the cops went and jailed everybody who says they’re in the mood to murder, they’d never have any room in the jug for the serious criminals. Like for instance the ones trying to make Coney into some kind of a new Las Vegas.”

  “Real funny,” Big Stuff said. He did not laugh.

  I asked Evie, “I take it the membership here is slightly divided on the question of casino gambling on the boardwalk?”

  “How come you think we got the house policy of locking up the guns?” she asked.

  Waldo said, “Look, it’s obvious you don’t trust us carnies. Okay. You don’t have to tell us what you and Picasso talk
ed about exactly. We only want to know if he’s okay, that’s all. And we just wanted to take a look at you and see if you’re an all-right guy—which I think you probably are.”

  Big Stuff said, “The membership’s divided on that one, too.”

  Evie asked again, “Is he okay?”

  I said nothing.

  Waldo said, “Detective Hockaday, we just want you to know that no matter what you or anybody else thinks of us carnies, we’re like anybody else would be when they got trouble in the family. Which is what we are here, family. We all got individual differences, and we take care of different business. But we also take care of each other, you see that?”

  “Let’s say Picasso done them murders,” Big Stuff said. “Sooner or later, you’re going to catch him someplace, which ain’t going to be far since he ain’t got the wherewithal to travel nowhere, and even the Foreign Legion don’t take old guys with bad eyes.

  “The thing is, though, we’d like it if you didn’t go shooting him down like a dog. If you give him a little dignity when you find him, on account of his art. Well, that’s all we’re asking.”

  Waldo said, “All of us have been pushed around here, and Picasso got pushed right up to the edge. Look around this room, look around the boardwalk, and Coney’s side streets. We’re all looking right into the gutter. When we fall, the smell of that gutter’s going to come as no big surprise. We’re doing the best we can, which includes throwing each other on the mercy of cops that seem like they might be all right.”

  “See, we love him,” Evie added.

  “There isn’t a man or woman here who’s missed out on a bad run-in with Picasso,” Waldo said. “But there’s nobody here in Coney who hasn’t got great respect for him as a carny and as a great artist.”

  “You love him, too, Waldo?” I asked.

  “Yeah, I do.”

  “All day out here, people have been telling me in different ways they love and admire Picasso,” I said. “I was at the Neptune, and Johnny Halo goes on and on about him, actually quoting the guy.”

  Evie narrowed her cupcake eyes and asked, “Johnny Halo told you he loves Picasso like we do?”

  “In a manner of speaking, yes.”

  I had drunk half my Scotch. Now I put back the rest of it and looked at my wristwatch.

  “Johnny Halo has warm eyes and a cold mouth,” Evie said. “You follow?”

  “You mean you don’t trust him?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “I’ll tell you who else never trusted Johnny Halo,” Waldo said. “And that’s Picasso himself. Him and Johnny, they were enemies.”

  “Since when?”

  “Well, after Picasso was kicked out of the Seashore, he was staying down under the boardwalk like folks do when they’re between places or hiding out,” Waldo said. “Two or three days after Picasso’s down there hiding, Johnny Halo’s suddenly got money, all kinds of money. So much money he buys out the Seashore Hotel from the landlord.

  “Which is very strange since Halo’s been living there himself paying rent on a room, way longer than Picasso lived there. Sometimes Halo’s had his troubles paying on the first of the month, too, even though he always had that ratty bar of his.”

  “Where does Halo live now?” I asked.

  Waldo said, “Oh, he’s still at the Seashore. He took over three rooms on the top floor and connected them up. He’s real proud of his place. He calls it the presidential suite.”

  “Don’t tell him no more about nothing,” Big Stuff said to Waldo. “I can’t stand listening to you; you sound like a gossipy old magpie.”

  “I don’t have time to listen anyway,” I said, standing up. I took three twenties out from my wallet and dropped them on the coffee table. “That’s so you can all have a drink for yourselves, all right?”

  I headed for the foyer, and Evie followed me. Sealo was on his way in. Estelline the sword swallower was pushing him in his wheelchair.

  “My guns,” I told Evie.

  She unlocked the cabinet and gave me the .38 and the Beretta .22. She looked in back of her, then at me and she said, “When you see Picasso, tell him God bless.”

  Then I walked back along West Fifth to Surf Avenue. But before I got on the subway, I cut over to the boardwalk and dropped in at the Neptune for a word with Halo.

  But Halo was not there.

  The bartender on duty was named Mike. I identified myself and asked where Johnny Halo was.

  “He decided to take the night off,” Mike said. “So he called me up to fill in.”

  “Did he say why he wasn’t working tonight?”

  “Well, he just said he had a little business over in Manhattan.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  I was making good progress with my notebook until the woman with the rhinestone sunglasses and the cotton wads in her ears boarded my Manhattan-bound F train at Brooklyn’s York Street station.

  There were lots of seats available since the car was less than half-filled. But she stood at the door looking everything over carefully, then chose to camp next to me.

  She was maybe ten or twelve years older than me, which I realized was an age when people begin looking a little battered unless they take extra time with their grooming. She did not.

  Her hair was dull yellow with white streaks in it that made her look youthful, oddly enough. But her skin was doughy and wrinkled, especially around the mouth and neck. She smelled of strong soap.

  “What’re you writing in that book there if you don’t mind my asking?” she asked.

  This could have been worse, I told myself. I could be on an airplane, trapped for hours with a chatty seatmate. But this was only the subway and I could get off at the first stop over on the Manhattan side, at Essex Street. It would not be long.

  “Just notes,” I told her. “To remind myself of what I’ve got to do tomorrow.”

  “Oh, well that’s okay.”

  She had a big leather bag with her which she now spread out across her lap. She rooted through it, elbowing me in the process. She pulled out a silver flask and a small plastic bottle.

  “Here’s to you,” she said, unscrewing the top of the flask and then slugging back a drink. She capped the flask and returned it to her bag.

  I said nothing, hoping to discourage conversation.

  “I don’t much like traveling these trains when I’m by myself at night,” she said. Then she let out a long sigh. “But let’s face it, I’m alone day and night now since my Henry’s been gone.”

  “I’m sorry, ma’am.”

  “How come?”

  “I’m sorry your husband’s gone.”

  “Husband? Don’t make me laugh. Christ, I never married him!”

  “Well, anyway, I’m sorry he died.”

  “Oh, that’s okay. Henry was a shit.” She took the flask out from her purse, unscrewed it and slugged back some more. “You’re a married guy, right?”

  “I used to be.”

  “Yeah, you got the face of a married guy.”

  “Is that good?”

  “That’s the best. That’s how come I sat down here beside you.”

  “I see.”

  “Henry was a hotshot business executive down in Wall Street. What’s your racket?”

  “Cop.”

  “Yeah, well it don’t surprise me.” She opened up the plastic bottle and took out a white wafer and put it in her mouth. “So you prob’ly busted lots of robbers in your time?”

  “A few.”

  “So now when you retire you can look back on your brilliant career in law enforcement and claim you did your part to vouchsafe the city for truth, justice and the American way. Right?”

  “I don’t know about that …”

  “Well I do, boy. You never touched my Henry, so in my personal book you’re a big flop as a cop.”

  “What did Henry do?”

  “I told you, he was in Wall Street.”

  “What was his crime, I mean?”

  “I just told you!
”

  “Working in Wall Street’s not a crime.”

  “Oh really, Snow White?” She took out her flask again and drank it dry. “Shit, it’s empty.”

  “It’s just as well,” I said. “It’s against the law to drink in the subway.”

  “Yeah, and it’s also against the law for the poor to beg. So you know what you can do with your law, right?”

  “Lady, are you all right?”

  “Of course not. I get on this train expecting that if I sit down next to a good-looking man, I’ll be safe out by myself. So you turn out to be a cop with this goddamn overexaggerated respect for the law—which by the way is an ass. How safe do you think you’re making me feel right now?” She took another wafer from her bottle and started chewing it slowly.

  “You want to tell me exactly what it was your Henry did when he worked in Wall Street?”

  “Ever read the business page, Snow White?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “You ought to be reading it every day. It’s a police blotter. Ever hear of junk bonds?”

  “Yes.”

  “Ever buy one?”

  “No.”

  “What a dope! You own any life insurance, you have a bank account?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Then you bought junk bonds, chump. Who do you think my Henry sold that crap to? Grads from Harvard and Wharton? No way. He peddled them to the savings and loan crooks and the insurance dorks and the bankers who are already pretty notorious about making dumb loans. He collected five percent of the action he peddled; his lawyer pals got four hundred an hour easy for drawing up the indentures, then kicked over some to Henry for tipping them business; and Henry’s other cronies at the banks and thrifts got promotions for these really shrewd deals he conned them into, and they kicked back on their Christmas bonuses.

  “And here’s the part where the law is an ass: just about nobody goes to jail when the whole house of cards falls down! Nobody gets rubbed out in a clam bar in Little Italy over this kind of a swindle, right? Hah! Instead, the president of the United States of America and all his flunkies in the Congress sucker the taxpayers out of money to cover up what Henry did!”

  The train slowed. Soon we would be at Essex Street.

  “I got to get off, lady,” I said.