Dark Maze

by Thomas Adcock

  Ruby laughed again and the lightness of her voice floated in the clean April breeze like a paper kite; she turned, as if watching the last easy moment of our day rise up and up until it faded from sight. Then she turned back to me, her mood grown heavy.

  “I wasn’t thinking about newspapers, actually,” she said. “I was thinking about something important.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like the dream I had last night.”

  There—it went through me again: the prickling shock of some odd recognition. Last night, the shock of the blue-eyed man rising from a coffin in Ruby’s play. Now the shock of a terrible closeness between us; knowing that Ruby could now take my place at dreaming.

  “What did you see?” I asked her.

  “Picasso, at his easel painting.”

  “What did he say?”

  “Nothing, it was nothing direct. But he gave me an idea.” “What?”

  “To try looking at this murder case by Picasso’s lights. Try it, Hock. Shut your eyes. What do you see?”

  I closed my eyes. I saw Picasso’s masterpiece, the montage of demons and drowning mortals. I heard the music from the Unicef Pavilion, the children’s sweet voices singing, “It’s a small world after all …”

  Ruby asked again, “What do you see?”

  “Picasso’s mural at the Fire and Brimstone.”

  “That’s it, exactly! That’s the idea.”

  “But Ruby, I don’t get this idea.”

  “You imagine yourself thinking like Picasso would think,” she said slowly, allowing me time to catch up to her vision. “The idea is, you imagine you’re Picasso looking at the bodies dropping dead. Celia, Dr. Reiser, Benito. But you see how it’s not murder.”

  “Not murder?” I stopped myself, and then I began to see.

  “By Picasso’s lights, no,” Ruby said. “What you see is an artist painting about death.”

  I said, “Not murdering, painting …”

  I finished my coffee, hung my new robe in Ruby’s closet, dressed and then left her place for my own. At home I would change into some fresh clothes, make some telephone calls and try to spend the rest of the day thinking like Picasso would think.

  All the way up the staircase to my apartment, I heard the telephone ringing.

  I sank down into my green chair, picked up my telephone and said, “Hello there, Inspector old sock. Nice of you to call.”

  There was a voice on the line that did not belong to Neglio. It was one of his two secretaries, the brunette who did not know how to type.

  She said, “Is this Detective Hockaday to whom I am speaking?”

  “Yes, dear, it is.”

  “Hold the line, please. I’m supposed to go get the inspector wherever he is.”

  I heard tiny heels click away across a tile floor. Then about a minute later the sound of a man’s size-tens came into range. Knowing what was likely to come next, I held the phone receiver several inches away from my ear.

  Then, Neglio’s bark: “Hock, where in the fuck have you been?”

  “Oh, just down at the newsstand buying extra copies of today’s Post. I want all my relatives to read my boss’s lovely sentiments on the topic of me.”

  “You haven’t got relatives, you hump. Except that screwy uncle of yours over on the other side.”

  I ignored the family slander. “That was a real load of crap you dumped on Slattery, Inspector.”

  “Hey, I don’t know what happened. The guy provoked me into a talky mood. You know how irritating he is. Slattery won’t ever get the hell away from me unless I give him something nobody else’s got.”

  “Come off it. I’m no super-cop. We both know what that was all about in the paper.”

  Like a rosy-cheeked old nun Neglio said, “Whatever do you mean?”

  “You’re putting this all on me. You’re busy making nice with the new mayor and along comes the first crime wave on his watch, so you want to be sure he gets the message there’s nothing you can do about it. Not you! Nobody in the department ever got in trouble by doing nothing, right?

  “Which is where I come in, the cop with his picture in the Post when he never asked for the publicity, the guy who always brings them in, boy! And if I don’t—or if I can’t make the bust quick enough—then how can that be the fault of somebody who does nothing?”

  “Didn’t I promise you a promotion out of all this?”

  “The promotion I’ll take. But the promise I made about having your pal the mayor tag along on my collar, forget it.”

  “I don’t have to take this, Hock.”

  “Sure you do. Slattery provokes me into a talky mood, too. You know how irritating he can be.”

  “It’s breaking my heart to see how you’re becoming more and more of a cynic every day.”

  “Eat a fig newton, then take a nice long nap,” I said. “You’ll get over it.”

  Neglio said nothing, but I knew he was steaming. I had called him on one of the small treacheries that emerge from time to time in our unspoken pact: I will use him, he will use me, back and forth and et cetera. Small treacheries, like the minor sins of marriage.

  “I have been calling you day and night, Hock, but you’re not answering, let alone reporting in. So I’m asking now, what the fuck is your progress on the case?”

  “With one or two more breaks, I think I’m close.” And I was actually beginning to imagine that was true. “Would you like to do something to help the cause?”

  “Well, I …”

  “I knew you would. Take down this name—Johnny Halo, just like it sounds. So far as I know, he’s got no aliases. He says, he’s an Army veteran, second war. He owns a bar in Coney Island called the Neptune. Also the Seashore Hotel in Coney, which he recently took over and where he’s lived for a long time. I want the deep check on this guy.”

  “All right, Hock.”

  “I want to know what the guy eats for breakfast, who he sleeps with, what he’s got in his family—especially the family part. I want to know if he’s in bed with any mafiosi.” “I’ll have it inside of twenty-four hours,” Neglio said. “Meanwhile, I want you to keep in touch with me, you hear, Hock?”

  “I will. But don’t call me, I’ll call you.”

  “You fucking hump, you! What am I supposed to say to the mayor?”

  “Tell him to have a buttercup day.”

  I took a look at the mail I had brought upstairs with me. There was no plain envelope with an upside-down flag stamp today, so I hoped Picasso was lying low. Con Edison sent me a second notice on my bill, which I immediately tossed since I have never seen the point of rushing these things. A magazine subscription service informed me that I might soon become a millionaire, and this I reluctantly tossed. There was finally the air letter from Ireland, postmarked Dún Laoghaire, but not addressed in my Uncle Liam’s familiar hand. I opened it and read:

  Dear Mr. Hockaday:

  I write on behalf of your dear uncle, Liam Hockaday, who has fallen ill. As you know, he suffers from a poor heart. The doctor has now confined him to bed and I have been engaged to look after your uncle’s needs and attend to any business that needs conducting.

  This letter, then, does the duty of informing you of unpleasant news. As a loyal friend of your uncle, I am, of course, terribly sorry for your troubles.

  I might add, however, that the doctor feels Liam’s life expectancy is relatively long as these things go—perhaps a year or better. And I can assure you, his only discomfort in these days is in the forced physical idleness.

  Should you wish further details, or the arrangement of a visit, I shall be only too happy to oblige at this end. I am currently in residence at your uncle’s home, here in Dún Laoghaire.

  Yrs faithfully, in the name of X,

  Patrick Snoody.

  How long had it been since I had seen my Uncle Liam, the man whose monthly checks, drawn on the Bank of Ireland, kept my mother and myself well and fed during my early years when father was gone off in the mists? Lia
m, who would come stay with us, and have whispered conversations with my mother in the kitchen after I had gone to bed.

  Only twice had I seen him since my boyhood. Once when he came to New York and we buried my mother in Woodlawn, up in the Irish section of the Bronx; once more when he came to the city on business he said was of no importance compared to the time we two would spend together again.

  That, in fact, was the last time. And I have never, to my regret, been to Ireland in return.

  Did I once take the chance of asking Liam about his brother—my father? No information was volunteered. And now Liam was dying.

  I took my personal directory out of the drawer below the telephone stand and looked up Liam’s number in Ireland, dialed it direct and waited.

  Five rings later and there was a “Hallo” on the line.

  I asked, “Is this Patrick Snoody?”

  There were crackling sounds, then an echo of my question, then, “Yes, yes. Snoody here.”

  “I received your letter today,” I said. “This is Neil Hockaday, in America.”

  Snoody spoke excitedly over my echo and so I missed much of what he said, hearing only, “… resting now, musn’t be disturbed now…. Sorry.”

  “Can you give Uncle a message for me?”

  “Yes, yes.”

  I waited for Snoody’s echo to clear. “Tell him, I’ll try coming for a visit soon. Tell him I’ve got pressing business to clear, but that I’ll be there. Tell him to wait for me.”

  “Yes, yes—wait for you.”

  “Mr. Snoody, thank you for your letter. I’ll call when I’m able to come.”

  “Yes, yes. We’ll be waiting.”

  Then I rang off, with the guilt in my heart that is deserved by all ungrateful relations of the old and alone. I told myself I would really make the trip. Then I cursed Picasso. I could get on a plane right there and then if not for him.

  I dialed Central Homicide. Logue was out in the field, but Captain Mogaill was on hand. He said, “That’s quite a trumpet blowing your tune in the Post, I see.”

  “It only sounds that way now,” I said.

  “That’s possibly so. The press has a way of setting you up as a fair-haired boy today, expressly so they’ll have something pretty to knock about tomorrow, when it is hoped you’ll fall from the weight of your own swollen head.”

  “My thoughts exactly,” I said. Then I asked, “Has Logue come up with anything useful, do you know?”

  “He has, and he’s dying to tell you direct but since there’s no love lost between us, I don’t mind bursting his bubble.”

  “Tell me,” I said.

  “First, he says that Celia Furman had very serious troubles with the lads at the IRS.”

  “That I know.”

  “But did you know the extent of her trouble? Did you know that the feds even impounded the lady’s car, which is what she was sleeping in?”

  “I didn’t know that,” I said. “But it sounds like something the IRS would do.”

  “So Logue says by this that the lady was especially desperate for money, you see.”

  “Yes. Anything else?”

  “One more thing,” Mogaill said. “Logue himself was nosing it up and down Forty-second Street yesterday, asking after Picasso of every skell and con who’d talk to him, and every shopkeeper likewise. He took along four dicks for help, and between them they combed the Deuce close as an egg to his chicken.”

  “Did they find anything?”

  “Who knows what this means, Hock, but the owner of one of them perpetual going-out-of-business electronics joints for the tourists, he remembers dealing with a geeky little guy in a beret. This was only about a week ago.”

  “Dealing how?”

  “The shopkeeper, he says your boyo was in the market for a good tape recorder. Which he did buy, with cash. Plus plenty of batteries. The shopkeeper remembers this particular transaction because of what the guy in the beret keeps saying, mostly to himself.”

  “What was that?”

  “Picasso keeps saying, ‘I got to get down this autobiography of myself, ain’t that right?’ He keeps saying this to somebody like somebody’s standing beside him. Anyway, business is business and the shopkeeper takes the wacko’s money and off goes Picasso with his tape recorder.”

  I thanked Mogaill for the information and told him to tell Logue I would speak to him soon. I entered these items in my notebook, adding to the list of unrelated items to be sorted out as I slept.

  Then I rang up the Neptune Bar in Brooklyn.

  Johnny Halo was not on the job.

  “We ain’t even open today,” a janitor told me. “I come around this morning since it’s payday, but Johnny wasn’t here. So I let myself in and I been waiting ever since. I’m still waiting, and helping myself to a few drinks.”

  I rang the Seashore Hotel and asked for Halo’s room. “He ain’t up there,” the desk clerk said. “He never come back last night.”

  “Ring the room anyway,” I said.

  There was no answer.

  They’ll never get rid of the hate in my head.

  I’m the only bedbug who can do that, which I will in the sweet by-and-by.

  But I got miles to go before I sleep.

  Ho, ho, ain’t that the truth?

  Miles to go!

  Meantime, wait’ll the little lady gets a load of what’s coming to her!

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  I made one last telephone call.

  Neglio did not seem pleased to hear from me so soon after our last conversation. He said, “Christ Almighty, Hock, what do you want out of me now?”

  “I need you to run a rapid warrant.”

  “Search?”

  “Yes. I’ll be on the F train out to Coney Island in about fifteen minutes, it’ll take me forty-five minutes to get to the Stillwell Avenue station and five minutes more to walk from the station to the Seashore Hotel on Surf Avenue. Which is already under police guard. I’d like the warrant to be in the hands of the cops at the hotel by the time I arrive.”

  “You’re taking the subway out to Coney Island?”

  “And I’ll be putting the out-of-pocket for tokens on my expense report.”

  “Hock, there are faster ways of getting around town, you know. Not to mention safer.”

  “You’re saying you want to loan me that armored black Chrysler of yours with Officer Flunky at the wheel?”

  “I don’t think …”

  “Neither do I.” I could hear steaming noises from Neglio’s end of the line.

  “Total time for me to get from my place out to the Seashore Hotel is one hour and five minutes, okay? I’m asking you to run a search warrant through the Brooklyn D.A.’s office during lunchtime, plus have a police courier deliver the paper for me all the way out to Coney inside of that time. Now that’s a very rapid warrant. Which is how come I need you. Or I could call up your pal the mayor if you don’t think you can handle it yourself.”

  Neglio made a few more steaming noises. “In case anybody should ask, Hock, what’s the purpose here?”

  “I want to search the business and residential premises of Johnny Halo. Make the warrant out for the Seashore and his bar, the Neptune. And make it for forty-eight hours in case I have to make two visits.”

  “Johnny Halo? This is the same guy you’ve already got me doing the nine yarder on? If you go turning over his place, Hock, you might wind up crumbing the play.”

  “Read the Post. Right there, black on white, it says I’ve got my own quirky ways of doing things, but that I always bring them in, boy.”

  “Cut it, Hock. That’s an order. And so’s this: spill.”

  “All right,” I said. “The thing is, Halo’s been missing since last night.”

  “Johnny Halo. He ties up to Charlie Furman, alias our man Picasso?”

  “Yes, he does. Only I don’t know exactly how. I can’t read between the lies yet.”

  “But what do you figure right now?”

  “Tod
ay, I figure there’s a percentage in taking Halo off the tilt. He’s an easier guy to find than Charlie Furman. And I figure if I find Halo, then I’m closing in on Picasso.”

  Neglio paused, thinking over the percentages. Then he said, “Okay, Hock. The warrant will be there. Go catch your cockamamie train.”

  True to his word, the warrant was waiting for me an hour and change later with a cop at the wheel of a squad car on surveillance duty outside the Seashore Hotel. The name tag on his blue twill shirt said he was Patrolman Harold Gotha.

  I showed him my gold shield.

  Gotha looked it over, then he flicked off a transistor tape player on the dashboard. I had recognized “Tangerine,” somewhere halfway through the piece and nearing the end of the lengthy middle-saxophone solo.

  He turned the warrant over to me. I slipped it into a pocket of my windbreaker and asked, “That’s Dexter Gordon you’re playing?”

  Gotha’s voice was loose and smoky, like a jazz musician’s. “Long Tall, the one and only.”

  “From ‘Nights at the Keystone,’ right?”

  He gave me an approving lopsided smile and said, “You’re all right. I’ve been reading about you today, Superman. The story didn’t say anything about you knowing your bebop, though. By the way, you take a lousy picture.”

  “It only shows you how it wasn’t my idea to get in the newspaper.”

  “Yeah, I guess. You need any help up there in the hotel, detective?”

  “Not for what I’m after now, but maybe later. How long are you on this detail?”

  “I started at noon, I’ll be here awhile.”

  “Good. I’ll see you when I come down.”

  “I ain’t going anywhere.” Gotha flicked on the tape player and Long Tall played on, from beyond his grave.

  The lobby was almost the same as it had been the evening before: coldly lit, sour-smelling and with Chastity the red-wigged press smoking a cigarette and sprawled in the only chair, the same skirt hiked up over her nylon-encased thighs. Two things, though, were markedly different: Jerry, the night clerk, had been spelled by a beagle-faced old fellow drinking beer from a can and today Chastity sported something new and intriguing—a lady’s green felt hat, with a broken feather on the side.