Dark Maze

by Thomas Adcock

  Stein looked at me like he wished I could somehow rescue him from Delilah, but I only said, “You hear the lady, Moe. The show must go on.”

  He said, “You sit here telling me that old gag? Give me a freaking break!”

  I stood up.

  Stein got panicky and asked, “Where do you think you’re going? I thought I was getting some protection.”

  “What’s he talking about?” Delilah asked, wandering over to her dressing table where her blond wig waited.

  Stein ignored her.

  I said to Stein quietly, “Don’t worry, I’ll be out watching. I’m going to get a drink at the bar.”

  I left his dressing room then, thinking about a couple of things that Stein had failed to mention in his story. One thing I could clear up by talking with Benny. The other thing was the name of Celia’s baby.

  But I had already made that connection.

  Hock, you got to see things my way!

  I done what I done because I think everybody’s got to pay to play. Ain’t that right?

  Damn straight!

  Like it says right in the holy goddamn bible, “He that loveth not his brother abideth in death.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Benny was surprised to see me back at the bar. Surprised and suspicious once again.

  I ordered a red.

  “I thought you was wanting to get in on the action upstairs,” Benny said when he put my drink down on the bar.

  “You mean the casino?”

  “Yeah …” Benny sounded like he was sorry to have answered me so openly.

  I started to say something, but I was interrupted by some loud recorded music that announced the start of The Great Morris’ first set that night. I turned toward the stage and saw Delilah all dolled up in her blonde finery, and The Great Morris in his tux and top hat. Moe looked a little wobbly.

  “I’m just crazy about mentalist acts,” I said. Benny looked relieved the subject had changed. Which made me go right back to it. “So, you’re running a gambling operation here on the premises?”

  “This don’t sound right,” Benny said.

  I reached into my suit coat and pulled out my gold shield and dropped it on the bar. I sipped my Scotch and looked over at the stage, where The Great Morris was starting a run of card tricks and the lovely Delilah was picking out audience participants.

  “What the …”

  I introduced myself. “Detective Neil Hockaday.”

  “I see you ain’t from Vegas after all,” Benny said.

  “No, you were right all along.”

  “What is this?”

  “Oh, I was just telling your partner all about myself, how I’m a cop, what I’m working on nowadays, that sort of thing. Moe was telling me quite a bit about himself, too. And this place the two of you have got here, upstairs and downstairs.”

  “Why’d Moe go blabbing that to you?”

  “Because I need to know if I’m going to catch his brother Charlie before Charlie comes and kills him,” I said in my best deadpan. “Aren’t you afraid Charlie might come kill you, too, Benny?”

  “Picasso!” And now Benny had lost some of his bravado. He went a little blue and shivery, like he had been standing in a meat locker for an hour or two.

  “I had a hunch you knew the connection.”

  Benny fingered the gun in his belt and looked around the room. “You’re the cop who’s hunting down that freaking lunatic?”

  “Correct.”

  Benny turned and poured himself a Bushmill’s, drank it down and asked, “Is Picasso—is Charlie Furman after Moe and me now?”

  “I wouldn’t be at all surprised if he’s got the two of you on his list.”

  “That son of a bitch!”

  “That’s no way to talk about your partner.”

  “I meant Charlie, not Moe.”

  “You want to help Moe, and yourself?”

  “Of course I do. What do you think?”

  “Then you have to answer my questions, like Moe did. Otherwise, just like I told Moe, I see to it that Picasso knows the coast is clear here.”

  Benny drew out his .44 revolver. “He’ll have one hell of an argument on his hands!”

  I laughed at him. “Do you really think Picasso cares about getting shot? Picasso’s all about taking certain people down in flames. People like you, Benny. Get it? You shoot him, it’ll be the last thing you do in this life.”

  This held a certain logic for Benny, who slowly put his revolver back in his belt. Candi came by with a drink order and winked at me. Benny filled the order and I glanced over at the stage. The Great Morris was blindfolded and guessing at objects volunteers from the audience held up in their hands. Every so often, laughter would break out.

  I asked Benny, “How’s he do that?”

  “You mean Moe?”

  “Yeah. How’s he get the right object?”

  “Delilah gives him the clue. She puts a little emphasis on a certain word, which will have a letter beginning with what the object in question is. There ain’t too much variation to the play. Guys only have a certain few things they carry around in their pockets, you know.”

  “Well, that’s simple.”

  “It all is,” Benny said. “Including the saps in the audience.”

  “Interesting.”

  “Mind if I ask you something?” Benny said.

  “What?”

  “How come you ain’t calling in the paddy wagons to bust up our action here?”

  “It’s a matter of priorities, Benny. First things first, you know? The first thing I’m trying to do is prevent you or Moe—or both of you—from being pictures of dead meat on the front page of the Post.”

  “That’s the kind of priorities I like.”

  “Enlightened self-interest, your partner’s sentiments exactly,” I said. “That’s why we were having such a productive heart-to-heart back in Moe’s dressing room—up until show time anyway. Unfortunately, we got cut off just when I needed to know something real important. Which is where you’re going to chime in, Benny. Okay?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Oh, I’m sure you do. After all, you know all of The Great Morris’ trade secrets and you don’t mind giving them away to me. Seems the least you can do to help me catch the lunatic Picasso and keep your own ass alive is to break a few more minor confidences.”

  “Well, when you put it like that.”

  I asked him straight out, “How come you and Moe opened the casino upstairs?”

  Benny sighed. “It ain’t none of my bright idea, I can tell you that. Remember how I told you my genius partner’s all the time feeling sorry for certain ones?”

  “Yes. Delilah, and Candi …”

  “Yeah, and his brother’s old lady, too.”

  “Celia.”

  “I suppose you know her whole story?”

  “Enough of it.”

  “Well, then maybe you know how she needed big money pretty bad?”

  “That, and a way to get it in a hurry.”

  “Did you also hear how she got blacklisted from the gambling circuit, where she was a big whale and all?”

  “I heard.”

  “Well, so there’s the answer. Don’t you see?”

  “I guess I don’t.”

  “Moe talked me into opening a place here so Celia could finally shoot craps again after all the years she had to lay low herself. I mean, where else’s she going to get action in the whole freaking world but here in a joint where her ever-oving old softhearted brother-in-law’s in charge?”

  “She could have gone to Vegas,” I said. “Or Atlantic City, or Amsterdam.”

  “Don’t be such a hayseed, Hockaday. You think them places is democracies?”

  Benny held up the bottle of Johnnie Walker and I nodded and he poured me another red. He watched The Great Morris perform while I sipped my drink and thought about he simple reason he had just given me for laying the Horny Poodle open to all the risk—and expense—that ca
me with casino gambling.

  The music got frantic up on stage and I turned to see Delilah blindfolding Moe. Then Benny reached into his pocket for his bifocals and said, “Well, there’s my cue for Moe’s piece-a-resistence.”

  I could see Delilah handing The Great Morris one of two pig writing pads, and then one of two felt markers. Then I saw her take the other pad and marker and wander out into he crowd.

  Benny explained, “Some sap in the audience’s going to draw a picture of something and then Delilah’ll hold it up or everybody to see. And then, presto! The Great Morris, mentalist extraordinary, will draw the same thing.”

  “Pretty slick.”

  “Aw, it’s a real crowd pleaser.”

  “How’s he do it?”

  “Simple technology,” Benny said. He reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out an electronic voice transmitter the size and shape of a cigarette lighter. “See this?”

  “And Moe’s got a receiver?”

  “Sure. It’s a little bean in his ear.”

  “And so you just stand back here at the bar …”

  “Watching what Delilah holds up, that’s right.”

  “And then you describe it,” I said. “Very, very slick—and simple.”

  “Simple as pie.”

  I saw now that Delilah was holding up a pad, and walking back toward the lighted stage to display it to the crowd. And to Benny and his bifocals. I could not make out the drawing myself.

  “What is it?” I asked Benny.

  Benny did not answer. I turned to him and asked again, “What’s the picture?”

  He said, “This don’t seem right.”

  I grabbed his arm. “What’s wrong?”

  “It’s a picture of this guy … in a top hat and a tuxedo like Moe … and his face, it’s shot full of bullets, I guess.”

  I grabbed Benny’s transmitter from his hand and said to him, “This is it!”

  “Oh shit! What’ll we do?”

  “You call 911 and tell them we’ve got assault with a deadly weapon in progress; tell them you’re calling for Hockaday. You got that?”

  “Yeah, okay.” Benny ran for the telephone.

  Then I headed across the room toward the stage. I did not run. I looked over the crowd at the tables ringing the stage. I did not see a gun barrel anywhere.

  I flipped the transmitter switch to open mic and whispered into it, “Moe, this is Hockaday speaking. Listen very carefully to me. When I tell you, I want you to drop down flat on the stage. Just drop flat. He’s after you, Moe. Do what I say. Now!”

  Stein dropped.

  A gun fired.

  There was a howling mix of male and female screams. Chairs and tables scraped the floor, falling over with thuds. Screaming men ran.

  Another shot.

  The sound of police sirens in the street.

  Now the panicking customers were gone from the tables that ringed the stage, leaving in that clearing a small and unsuspecting—and familiar—figure. I saw him raise a pistol in two hands and take aim at Moe, sprawled on the age, blindfolded and screaming. Delilah backed away from Stein, holding two hands over her mouth.

  I called to the man with the gun, “Big Stuff!”

  The dwarf reeled, and spotted me.

  I pulled out my .38 and bulled my way through a line of creaming customers, toward the dwarf. I called his name gain, “Big Stuff!”

  He saw my gun now, his eyes went wild. He tucked his head and ran at a right angle from me, toward the bar. I shouted, “Halt!” But he kept running, with the pistol in his hands.

  I turned and chased him and called out, over and over, “Halt! Police!”

  I tried, but I could not get a clear shot at him. The crowd was too thick and Big Stuff was too low to the floor.

  Cops were pouring into the place now. Customers started freezing in place.

  I got nearer to Big Stuff.

  He turned and saw me. His face was twisted in shock and fear.

  He raised the pistol at me.

  “Don’t do it!” I shouted.

  But I could see he meant to surrender his weapon, that he had no intention of shooting me.

  But Benny did not see it that way. He fired one shot of his .4 revolver.

  Big Stuff crumpled at the waist, stumbled forward a few teps toward me. Then he fell facedown on the floor.

  I ran to him and stood over his misshapen body, my legs straddling his back. I held my gold shield high above my head so the uniforms could easily make me. About ten of them formed a circle around Big Stuff and me. I saw the others fanning out through the club.

  I grabbed the shoulder of a sergeant and pointed him in the direction of the stage, where Delilah stood trembling. “Put the collar on her,” I told him. “She’s in on this.”

  Then I knelt to the floor. I saw that Big Stuff had taken the shot in his lower back, and I saw the blood flowing freely from his mouth and nose.

  I touched his face.

  Big Stuff turned his head and looked up at me with one eye, knowing that he would soon shut it forever. I said, “Don’t move.”

  One of the uniforms put in a call for paramedics on his point-to-point hip radio.

  Big Stuff hissed at me, “Lead down here.”

  I put my face down near his and said, “Go ahead, tell me.”

  His words came in sprays of blood. “We had reasons for what we done. Coney Island reasons, you understand?”

  I lied to the dying man. “I understand.”

  Big Stuff smiled a bloody smile. “It’s all we have anymore. We’re trying to hang on. See? Coney Island reasons.” He was slipping fast.

  Quickly, I lied again. “I should go tell her it’s all over now.”

  He said, “Yes … over …”

  “Where is she, Big Stuff?”

  He said, “Want a laugh? I loved her. I’d do anything for that crazy woman.”

  “Where is she, Big Stuff? Tell me.”

  The dwarf’s last words were, “With him, in the old slaughterhouse. Where else?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  I had a squad car run me over to my apartment.

  Ruby was there, reading a book.

  I kissed her, then I telephoned Neglio at his home. I was happy to get his answering machine. I said, “I’m going in after Picasso.”

  Then I changed out of my suit into jeans, boots, a sweatshirt and a jacket. I strapped on a second shoulder holster for my .44 and I filled my pockets with three sets of bracelets and extra bullets for both the .38 and the .44.

  Ruby stared at me.

  “It looks worse than it is,” I said.

  “That’s a damn lie,” she said.

  “When I come back, we’ll talk about taking a trip, all right?”

  “I’ll be waiting.”

  Did she know how good those words sounded? Does anybody besides a cop know?

  I picked up a flashlight from out of a drawer in the sideboard and left.

  Standing in front of it now, I could only think how I should have known. I should have known from the day Picasso told me about the bodega windows, and the fear he had so proudly captured in the pig’s eye. If not then, I should surely have known after the murder in that bodega.

  Like Ruby said, “Right under your nose—right here in Hell’s Kitchen.”

  Like Big Stuff said, “Where else?”

  Where else but the old kosher slaughterhouse hugging a desolate stretch of Eleventh Avenue, between Thirty-eighth and Thirty-seventh Streets?

  I had walked all around the place, figuring where Picasso might have made his door and where in the big old hulk he had set up his studio. Probably somewhere on the north side, I told myself; artists like working in north light, the truest light. The door was probably a hole, covered by some salvaged piece.

  I looked up now at the wide gateways that once were filled by wooden chutes and screams of dumb fear, now sealed with cement and cinder block; ten stout floors in all, windows shuttered over in tin; and the big
terra-cotta busts of ring-muzzled hogs and lambs and steers set high along the old red-brick walls. And all of it coated gray from the perpetual swirl of exhaust grime from the Lincoln Tunnel traffic.

  There was a steel trash bin set against the limestone base of the rear wall. I pushed past it to find the opening, a small triangular gap punched between two sections of crumbled brick. I bent, flashed light inside, and startled a rat. Then I hunched my shoulders and exhaled, and squeezed my way into the black insides.

  I stood in heavy darkness and waited for my eyes to adjust, and my ears.

  Now came fading echoes. And furtive scratchings from interior walls alive with vermin. I drew out my big piece, the .44 Charter Arms Bulldog in my shoulder holster. This I held in my right hand. With my left, I swept my surroundings with the flashlight beam.

  I had entered a wide corridor beneath an iron staircase. Down the corridor and beyond the stairs was a line of tall hollow spaces, each the size of a large door. A bank of elevators must have been there years ago.

  I directed the flashlight beam up along the staircase rails and disturbed a nest of bats clinging upside-down to an asbestos-covered pipe. The animals dropped through the dank air in frenzied loops. I covered my head and moved forward, and headed up the stairs.

  Near the top of the first flight, a rusted step gave way. My leg sank into a hole and pain filled my knee. From that point on, I tested each riser before putting down my full weight. And I walked along the edges of the steps, close against the wall, the way a good burglar will quietly stalk through an unfamiliar room.

  At the fourth floor, there was the strong odor of cats—male cats who had sprayed urine to mark their territories. anybody living in this place was sure to have cats about to control rodents.

  I went up one more floor where the cat odor was strongest. Then I moved toward the north side of the building, through a hallway where there once might have been offices full of people with work to do. Emptiness and stillness now, and all the doors gone but one.

  The single remaining door was closed. On it was written:

  HOME IS WHERE

  THE HATRED IS