by Ed McBain
“Then join us. I feel terribly guilty somehow. I feel I gave you information that doesn’t help you at all.”
“Well, maybe my partner’s doing a little better,” Hawes said. “In any case, I would be delighted to have some tea with you and your husband.”
Danny Gimp, it seemed, was developing a taste for the great outdoors.
Carella didn’t mind spending time in the fresh air, but he wished that Danny had exercised a bit more judgment in his choice of a location.
“Fiftieth and Warren,” Danny had said, undoubtedly picking this particular corner because it was several miles distant from the precinct. He could not have known, or perhaps he did know and was simply being ornery, that the right angle described by those cross streets neatly embraced an empty lot over which all the winds of January howled and screeched and ranted. Carella, his coat collar pulled high up on the back of his neck, his head tucked in like a turtle’s, his ears numb, his coat flapping around his legs, his hands in his pockets, cursed Danny Gimp and wondered why his father had ever left Italy. In Italy, when the carabinieri met a stool pigeon, it was probably at a sidewalk table in the sunshine. “Buon giorno, tenente,” the stoolie would say. “Vuole un piccolo bicchiere di vino?”
“Hello, Steve,” the voice behind him whispered.
He recognized the voice as Danny’s and turned immediately. Danny was wearing a heavy overcoat, a thick Irish tweed with an enormous collar that covered the back of his head. In addition, he was wearing a woolen muffler and a checked cap, and bright yellow earmuffs. He looked cheerful and well rested and warm as toast.
“Let’s get the hell out of this cold,” Carella said. “What is it with you, Danny? I remember times we used to meet like civilized people, in restaurants, in bars. What is it with this frozen-tundra routine?”
“You cold?” Danny asked, surprised.
“I’ve been standing on this corner for the past fifteen minutes. Listen to that wind. It’s from Nanook of the North.”
“Gee, I’m nice and warm,” Danny said.
“There’s a cafeteria up the street. Let’s try it,” Carella said. As they began walking, he asked, “What’d you get for me?”
“Well, I found out about the game. I don’t know what good it’ll do you, but I found out about it.”
“Shoot.”
“First of all, it ain’t regular, like you said it was. It’s a sometime thing, whenever the urge strikes. Sometimes two, three times a week, and other times maybe only once a month, you dig?”
“I got caught in one when I was a kid. I dig,” Carella said. “In here.”
He pushed his way through the cafeteria’s revolving door, and Danny followed him.
“I’ve always been afraid of revolving doors,” Danny said.
“How come?”
“You want some coffee?”
“Yeah, sure.”
They went to the counter, got two cups of coffee, and then found an empty table at the back of the place. Before they sat, Danny looked the place over very carefully. “Lots of these allnight cafeterias are meeting places for junkies,” he said. “I wanted to make sure nobody made us.”
“Okay,” Carella said. “About the game.”
“I told you already that you were wrong about it being a regular thing, right?”
“Right. Go on.”
“Second, you were right about it being stationary. But Steve, it’s a very small game.”
“Are you talking about the number of players or the bets?”
“Both. If they have ten guys playing each time, they’re lucky.”
“That’s a fairly big game,” Carella said.
“Nah, not really. I’ve seen blankets with two dozen guys around them.”
“Okay, what about the bets?”
“Small-time stuff. There’s no limit, but the bets hardly ever go higher than a buck or two, maybe on occasion a finnif. But that’s it.”
“What about Lasser? Was he taking a house vigorish?”
“Nope.”
“What do you mean? He wasn’t taking a cut?”
“Nope.”
“Then why’d he risk having the game in his basement?”
“I don’t know, Steve.”
“This doesn’t make much sense.”
“Neither do the players.”
“Who played, Danny?”
“Different guys each time, mostly very cheap hoods. Only two regulars, far as I can make out.”
“And who are they?”
“One is a guy named Allie the Shark Spedino. You know him?”
“Fill me in.”
“Very nothing,” Danny said. “I think he served a few terms up at Castleview, I don’t know for what.”
“Okay. Who was the other regular?”
“Guy named Siggie Reuhr. Ever hear of him?”
“No.”
“Me neither. In any case, this game was strictly kindergarten stuff. There was no money in it, and the guys in it are practically anonymous—who the hell ever heard of them?”
“Did you find out whether there’d been any big winners?”
“How you gonna have big winners when you ain’t got big money? Besides, if Lasser wasn’t cutting the game, then why would anybody hold a grudge against him, big winner, big loser, or whatever?”
“Yeah, you’re right. I don’t get this, Danny.”
“Well, one thing’s for sure,” Danny said. “Whatever reason Lasser had for letting them use that basement, it wasn’t ‘cause he was taking any money out of the game.”
“Was he putting any into it?”
“What do you mean?”
“Did he play?” Carella asked.
“Nope. Sometimes he watched. Most of the time he was off in another part of the basement, reading a paper or playing solitaire, like that.”
“Who gave you this, Danny?”
“A guy who played in a few of the games before he realized they were gonna stay small potatoes.”
Carella shook his head. “I don’t get this. I really don’t.”
“What don’t you get?”
“Lasser was supposed to be making money out of these games. Anyway, that’s what his friends told me.”
Danny shrugged. “Friends don’t always know,” he said, “I’m telling you for sure, Steve. This was a nothing game. Lasser wasn’t taking a penny out of it.”
“Maybe he was getting a flat rate from somebody. Couple of hundred every time they played, how about that?”
“Steve, this is a nothing game, you dig? A buck, two bucks at a time, that’s all. So who’s gonna give Lasser a couple of bills for running the game, would you mind telling me? There ain’t that much money in the game itself!”
“Okay, maybe he got twenty-five bucks or so.”
“That’s more sensible, but even that’s high.”
“I don’t think he’d risk it for less,” Carella said.
“What risk? Look, Steve, from what I got this game is common knowledge to every cop on the beat. Which means they’re getting theirs, right? So what’s the risk to Lasser? No risk at all. He lets them use the basement and he comes out of it smelling of roses, right?”
“He’s just doing it as a favor, huh?” Carella asked.
“Why not? He’s giving some guys a place to have a game. What’s so hard to believe about that?”
“Nothing,” Carella said. “I believe it.”
“So then what’s the problem?”
“I’d like to know how Georgie Lasser, who lives on a nice respectable street in New Essex, comes to know a bunch of hoods who want to shoot dice in his basement.”
Danny shrugged. “Why don’t you ask the hoods?” he suggested.
“That’s just what I plan to do,” Carella said.
Allie the Shark Spedino came into the squadroom of his own volition at 10:00 A.M. on the morning of Monday, January 13. He had been out of the city all weekend, he explained, and had just returned to discover from some of the neighborhood
guys that two bu…two detectives from the 8-7 were looking for him. So, having nothing to hide, he figured he might as well come up to see them before they put out an all-points bulletin, ha ha ha.
Carella and Hawes let Spedino chuckle a bit and then asked him to take a seat. Spedino was not called Allie the Shark for nothing. He had a head and face that came to a sloping point at the front, like the nose of a shark, and he had small sharp little teeth that scared the hell out of you whenever he smiled. In addition to that, he moved with a dancer’s agility and grace so that he seemed to be gliding effortlessly through Caribbean waters hunting for skin divers off coral reefs. He also gave an impression not of fearlessness but of plain unpredictability. You never knew whether splashing water in his face would send him swimming away in panic or would provoke him to a bloodthirsty attack. Carella hadn’t liked him after reading his B-sheet, and he liked him even less in person, sitting opposite him at a squadroom desk.
They had requested a copy of Spedino’s police record from the Bureau of Criminal Identification, Danny having told Carella that Spedino had served time up at Castleview on at least two separate occasions. The BCI had promptly provided Carella with the information he’d asked for, and he and Hawes had gone over it in the squadroom on Saturday afternoon.
Now, in the warm comfort of the squadroom on Monday morning, Spedino grinned and asked, “So why’d you want to see me?”
“Have you ever done time, Spedino?” Carella asked, testing him.
“If you guys were looking for me, then you’ve already seen my B-sheet, and you know exactly what I done or I didn’t do, right?” Spedino asked, and he smiled his small pointed shark smile.
“Well, let’s assume we haven’t seen your B-sheet and don’t know a thing about you. Fill us in.”
“I took two falls,” Spedino said, the smile vanishing from his face to leave only a very serious circling shark look. “I hung some paper back in 1930 and done five at Castleview, no parole.”
“First offense?” Carella asked.
“Yeah.”
“And you served the full term?”
“Yeah, well, I was eighteen at the time, you know, and I thought I was hot stuff. I didn’t deserve to be paroled, believe me.”
“So you were released in 1935, is that right?”
“Yeah. And I was back in again in 1936, though not at Castleview.”
“Where, and what for?”
“I done six months on Walker Island for coercion.”
“Who’d you coerce?”
“I tried to convince this guy who worked for a bank to print up some checks for me, with my name on them, you know?”
“How’d you try to convince him?”
“I told him I’d cut him up if he didn’t get the checks for me.”
“What happened?”
Spedino shrugged. “He went to the cops. So I never got my checks, and instead I got six months on Walker.”
“And since that time?” Hawes asked.
“Clean as a whistle.”
“Except for the crap games in Lasser’s basement, huh?”
Spedino’s expression did not change an iota. “What crap games?” he asked “Who’s Lasser?”
“George Lasser.”
“Never heard of him.”
“At 4111 South 5th.”
“Where’s that?”
“We know you were there, Spedino.”
“When was the game?” Spedino asked.
“Why? Are you going to tell us all about it?”
“No, I was trying to think how maybe I could have been mistaken for somebody else or something. That’s why I wanted to know when the game was.”
“Spedino,” Carella said slowly, “you’re full of crap.”
“Well, that may be so,” Spedino said, smiling his shark grin, “but the truth of the matter is that I have been clean since 1936 when I got off of Walker Island, and I never hope to see the inside of another prison again.”
“What you mean is that you hope you never get caught again, isn’t that it, Spedino?”
“No, sir, I mean I have been on the straight and narrow since that time, that’s what I mean.”
“Since 1936, is that right?”
“Yes, sir, since November 1936, that is correct.”
“When did you meet Lasser? Around that time?”
“I do not know who Lasser is,” Spedino said. His speech, like his manner, had changed abruptly the moment the crap games had been mentioned. He tried very much to sound like an elocution professor now, which meant that he succeeded only in sounding like a cheap hood who had been convicted once for passing bum checks and again for threatening someone with violence if he did not help Spedino in the pursuit of his chosen profession, which seemed to be the hanging of paper. At the same time, he sat up straight in the hard-backed chair and tried to appear very dignified, which meant that he succeeded in looking like a shark who had somehow come to the surface in a dark-blue suit and a gray tie and a neat gray fedora which was perched on his lap.
“Lasser is the man who allowed you to have your crap games in his basement,” Carella said. “You and your friend Siggie Reuhr, who is the only other regular in the game. Who is he, Spedino? We don’t have a record for him.”
“I never heard of him in my life,” Spedino said.
“Spedino, are you listening?” Carella asked.
“I’m listening.”
“Spedino, this is a homicide rap we’re dealing with here.”
“What do you mean, a homicide rap?”
“This isn’t a gambling misdemeanor or some more bum checks being passed. This is a man dead with an ax in his head.”
“I wouldn’t even touch a fly,” Spedino said, “unless it was unzipped,” making a joke the detectives had heard a thousand times before. They continued to stare at him without smiling. “Unless it was unzipped,” Spedino said again, as though repetition would improve the flavor, but the detectives still watched him unsmilingly.
“Homicide,” Hawes said.
“Homicide,” Carella repeated.
“Homicide, my ass,” Spedino answered angrily. “What kind of phony rap you trying to hang on me? I never even heard of George Lasser, or of this Sigmund Freud, either.”
“Siggie Reuhr,” Carella corrected.
“Yeah, him. What the hell is it with you guys, anyway? You can’t bear to see somebody make good? I took two lousy falls back in the thirties, and you’re still bugging me about them. Well, get off my back, huh? You got something to book me for? If not, either let me go, or let me call my lawyer.”
“Oh boy, we’ve got a real big-time gangster in here,” Hawes said. “Look at him—he’s going to call his lawyer. Come on, we’ll do a real grade-B movie bit, okay, Spedino? You call your lawyer, and when he gets here we’ll make like cops and call him ‘Counselor’ and everything, how’s that?”
“Haha, very funny,” Spedino said.
“Tell us about those crap games,” Carella said.
“I don’t know any crap games. I don’t even know how to shoot dice, that’s the truth. Sevens, elevens, they’re all the same to me.”
“Sure,” Carella said.
“Sure.”
“We would like to know what your connection with George Lasser is, or rather was,” Carella said. “Now how about telling us what we want to know, Spedino, before we find something to hang around your neck.”
“What’re you going to find, huh? Who you trying to kid? I’m clean as a whistle.”
“How have you been earning a living, Spedino?”
“I work in a bookshop.”
“In a what?”
“It’s impossible, huh? Impossible for a con to work in a bookshop. Well, that’s where I work.”
“Where? What bookshop?”
“It’s called The Bookends, and it’s on Hampton Avenue, in Riverhead.”
“What’s your boss’s name?”
“Matthew Hicks.”
“How much does he
pay you?”
“Eighty-five dollars a week. That’s before taxes.”
“And you try to lose it all in crap games, huh?”
“I don’t try to lose it no-place,” Spedino said. “I’m a married man with two kids, and I’ve been straight since 1936. Listen, I’m not a spring chicken any more, you know. I’m fifty-two years old.”
“George Lasser was eighty-six,” Hawes said.
“That’s a nice age,” Spedino answered, “but I still don’t know him.”
“We’ve just been misinformed, huh?” Carella said.
“I guess so.”
“You’ve never been anywhere near 4111 South 5th, and you never knew about a crap game going on down there in the basement, and you don’t know George Lasser, or Siggie Reuhr, either.”
“That’s right,” Spedino said, nodding. “You’ve got it all right.”
“We’ll get back to you, Spedino,” Carella said.
“Can I go now?”
“Where were you this weekend?”
“Away, I told you.”
“Where?”
“I took the family to the country for a few days.”
“How come you’re not at work this morning?”
“We don’t open till eleven.”
“And what time do you close?”
“Seven at night. This is a bookstore, you know. People don’t come into bookstores eight o’clock in the morning.”
“Who wrote Strangers When We Meet?” Hawes asked suddenly.
“Don’t ask me nothing about books,” Spedino said. “All I do is run the cash register and keep an eye on everybody to make sure they don’t walk out with half the store.”
“Well,” Carella said, “thanks for stopping by, Spedino. You’d better get to work now. You don’t want to be late.”
Spedino rose, his gray fedora in his hands. He looked first at Carella and then at Hawes and then said, “You still think I’m involved in this, huh?”
“We’ll let you know, Spedino.”
“Just do me one favor.”
“What’s that?”
“When you call my boss, when you call Mr. Hicks, just tell him this is a routine check, will you? Don’t make it sound like I done anything.”
“Sure,” Carella said.
Spedino turned to Hawes with his shark grin and, as though taking him into his confidence, said, “He still don’t believe me, your partner.”