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Two keys were needed to open the door and both were chained to his belt. He went in and hung his uniform coat carefully in the closet, then put on a clean but much-patched sport shirt. The new elevator boy was still asleep in the big double bed and he kicked the frame of the bed with his number-fourteen shoe.
“Get up. You go to work in an hour.”
Reluctantly, still half asleep, the boy crawled out of the bedclothes and stood there, naked and slim, scratching at his ribs. Charlie smiled in pleasant memory of the previous night and smacked the boy lightly on his lean buttock.
“You’re going to be all right, kid,” he said. “Just take care of old Charlie, and Charlie will take care of you.”
“Sure, Mr. Charlie, sure,” the boy said, forcing interest into his voice. This whole thing was new to him and he still didn’t like it very much, but it got him the job. He smiled coyly.
“That’s enough of that,” Charlie said and slapped the boy again, but this time hard enough to leave a red print on the white skin. “Just make sure the door is locked behind you when you go, and keep your mouth shut on the job.” He went out.
The street was a lot hotter than he had thought it would be, so he whistled for a cab. This morning’s work should net him enough to pay for a dozen cabs. Two empty pedicabs raced for his business and he sent the first one away because the driver was too runty and thin: Charlie was in a hurry and he weighed 240 pounds.
“Empire State Building, Thirty-Fourth Street entrance. And make some time.”
“In this weather?” the driver grunted, standing on the pedals and lurching the creaking machine into motion. “You want to kill me, general?”
“Die. It won’t bother me. I’ll give you a D for the trip.”
“You want me to die by starving, maybe? That much won’t take you as far as Fifth Avenue.”
They haggled the price most of the trip, twisting their way through the crowded streets, shouting to be heard above the unending noise of the city, a sound they were both so used to that they weren’t even aware of it.
Because of the power shortage and lack of replacement parts there was only one elevator ru
With his shoulder-length white hair Judge Santini bore a strong resemblance to an Old Testament prophet. He didn’t sound like one.
“Crap, that’s what it is, crap. I pay a goddamn fortune for flour just so I can get a good bowl of pasta and what do you turn it into?” He pushed the plate of spaghetti away distastefully and dabbed the sauce from his lips with the large napkin he had tucked into his shirt collar.
“I did the best I could,” his wife shouted back. She was small and dark and twenty years younger than he. “You want somebody to make spaghetti for you by hand, you should have married a contadina from the old country with broken arches and a mustache. I was born right here in the city on Mulberry Street, just like you, and all I know about spaghetti is you buy it from the grocery store—”
The shrill ring of the telephone cut through her words and silenced her instantly. They both looked at the instrument on the desk, then she turned and hurriedly left the room, closing the door behind her. There weren’t many calls these days and what few came through were always important and about business she did not want to hear. Rosa Santini enjoyed all the luxuries that life provided, and what she didn’t know about the judge’s business wasn’t going to bother her.
Judge Santini stood, wiped his mouth again and laid the napkin on the table. He didn’t hurry, not at his age he didn’t, but neither did he dawdle. He sat down at the desk, took out a blank notepad and stylo and reached for the phone. It was an old instrument with the cracked handpiece held together by wrappings of friction tape, while the cord was frayed and spliced.
“Santini speaking,” he said and listened carefully, his eyes widened. “Mike — Big Mike — my God!” After this he said little, just yes and no, and when he hung up his hands were shaking.
“Big Mike,” Lieutenant Grassioli said, almost smiling; even a mindful twinge from his ulcer didn’t depress him as it usually did. “Someone did a good day’s work.” The bloodstained jimmy lay on the desk before him and he admired it as though it were a work of art. “Who did it?”
“The chances are that it was a break and entry that went wrong,” Andy said, standing on the other side of the desk. He read from his notepad, quickly summing up all the relevant details. Grassioli grunted when he finished and pointed to the traces of fingerprint powder on the end of the iron.
“What about this? Prints any good?”
“Very clear, lieutenant. Thumb and first three fingers of the right hand.”
“Any chance that the bodyguard or the girl polished the old bastard off?”
“I’d say one in a thousand, sir. No motive at all — he was the one who kept them both eating. And they seemed to be really broken up, not about him I don’t think, but about losing their meal ticket.”
Grassioli dropped the jimmy back into the bag and handed it across the desk to Andy. “That’s good enough. We’ll have a messenger going down to BCI next week so send the prints along then and a short report on the case. Get the report on the back of the print card — it’s only the tenth of the month and we’re already almost through our paper ration. We should get prints of the bird and the bodyguard to go with it — but the hell with that, there’s not enough time. File and forget it and get back to work.”
While Andy was making a note on his pad the phone rang; the lieutenant picked it up. Andy wasn’t listening to the conversation and was halfway to the door when Grassioli covered the mouthpiece and snapped, “Come back here, Rusch,” then turned his attention to the phone.
“Yes, sir, that’s right,” he said. “There seems no doubt that it was a break and entry, the killer used the same jimmy for the job. A filed-down tire iron.” He listened for a moment and his face flushed. “No, sir, no we couldn’t. What else could we do? Yes, that’s SOP. No, sir. Right away, sir. I’ll have someone get on it now, sir.”
“Son of a bitch,” the lieutenant added, but only after he had hung up the receiver. “You’ve done a lousy job on this case, Rusch. Now get back on it and see if you can do it right. Find out how the killer got into the building — and if it really was break and entry. Fingerprint those two suspects. Get a messenger down to Criminal Identification with the prints and have them run through, I want a make on the killer if he has a record. Get moving.”
“I didn’t know Big Mike had any friends?”
“Friends or enemies, I don’t give a damn. But someone is putting the pressure on us for results. So wrap this up as fast as possible.”
“By myself, lieutenant?”
Grassioli chewed the end of his stylo. “No, I want the report as soon as possible. Take Kulozik with you.” He belched painfully and reached into the drawer for the pills.
Detective Steve Kulozik’s fingers were short and thick and looked as though they should be clumsy; instead they were agile and under precise control. He held Shirl’s right thumb with firm pressure and rolled it across the glazed white tile, leaving a clear and unsmudged print inside the square marked R THMB. Then one by one, he pressed the rest of her fingers to the ink pad and then to the tile until all the squares were full.