Paul Cain - Seven Slayers

“Did you take him anywhere tonight?”

“Uh-huh.” Solly drank, nodded. “I picked him up at his apartment a little after midnight an’ took him to the corner of Bleecker an’ Thompson Street. He said he wouldn’t need me any more tonight.” Green tasted his rye, made a face and put a twenty-dollar bill on the bar.

Solly said, “Don’t you like it, Mister Green?”

Green shook his head and edged the glass along the bar with the side of his hand until it was in front of Solly.

Solly regarded it meditatively. “I’ll be damned,” he said, “a swell guy like Mister Costain getting the works like that...” He picked up the glass.

Green was lighting a cigarette. “Who did it?”

Solly shrugged. “There is a lot of guys who never liked him, because they didn’t understand him. He was — uh — ec—” Solly stopped, tasted his fresh drink and tried again: “He was ec—”

“Eccentric?”

Solly bobbed his head.

Green persisted: “But who hated him enough and had guts enough to tip him over?”

Solly drained his glass, then closed one eye and looked immeasurably wise. “Well, if you ask me,” he said quickly, “the guy who had plenty of reason to, an’ maybe enough guts to, was plenty close to home... Did’ja ever meet a fella named Demetrios — something Demetrios? A Greek-tall shiny-haired sheik with a big smile?”

Green shook his head.

Solly leaned closer. “He worked as a kind of bodyguard an’ all-around handy-man for Mister Costain. Mister Costain liked him...” Solly’s voice dissolved to a hoarse stage-whisper. “I happen to know that Demetrios an’ June Neilan, Costain’s girl, was like that” — he held up two grimy fingers pressed close together — “right under Costain’s nose.”

Green’s brows ascended to twin inverted Vs. “That’s a good reason for Costain to hang it on the Greek,” he objected, “but not the other way around.”

“Wait a minute. You don’t get it.” Solly’s face split to a wide grin. “I happen to know this Demetrios has tried to let Costain have it in the back a couple times, only it went wrong, an’ Costain didn’t even tumble to who it was. I happened to be in the right place at the right time.”

“Why didn’t you tell Costain?”

Solly stared hard at his empty glass.

Green smiled faintly. “Did Demetrios pay off?”

Solly nodded sheepishly. Green rapped on the bar and the bartender filled both glasses.

“It’s just like it always is,” Solly croaked philosophically. “Costain was crazy jealous of everybody except the right guy, an’ distrusted everybody except the guy who was holding the knife.”

“Where did Costain live? Some place on West Ninetieth, wasn’t it?”

“Uh-huh. Three thirty-one.”

Green picked up his change and Solly gulped both drinks and they went out and started across the slippery sidewalk towards the cab.

A slight, white-faced man with his coat collar turned up and the brim of his soft black hat turned down as much as possible to cover his face came up to them and said, “Hello, Solly. Hello, Mister Green,” in a soft muffled voice. He took a short snub-nosed revolver out of his overcoat pocket and shot Solly in the stomach twice. Solly slipped and fell side-wise against Green and they both fell; Solly took two more slugs that were intended for Green. The cold magnified the roar of the gun to thunder. The wind whipped around the corner and the brim of the white-faced man’s hat blew up and Green recognized Giuseppe Picelli, Number Three Barber.

Then Green and Solly were a tangled mass of threshing arms and legs on the icy sidewalk and Picelli turned and ran east on Forty-ninth Street.

On the third floor of the rooming house at Three Thirty-two West Ninetieth, directly across the street from Three Thirty-one, a man sat motionlessly at the window of the large dimly lighted front room. He had taken off the tweed Chesterfield he had worn when he left the Boston train at One Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street, and his suit coat; he sat in his deep-pink silk shirt-sleeves on the edge of a heavily upholstered chair, leaning forward to peer steadily through the slit under the drawn window shade.

From time to time he lighted a fresh cigarette from the butt of the last, glanced at his watch; these were the sole disturbances to his rigid immobility, his entirely silent vigil.

At two thirty-six the phone rang. He picked it up from the floor with his eyes on the slit, grunted: “Yeah.”

He listened silently for perhaps a minute, then said: “What the hell difference does it make whether Green recognized you or not if he’s dead?... Oh, you’re not sure. They both fell, but you’re not sure” — his tone dripped sarcasm — “Well, you’d better make sure. I don’t care how you do it, you’ve had your orders. Check on it some way and then come on up here, and be careful when you come in.”

He put the phone on the floor, lighted a fresh cigarette.

Demetrios said: “I don’t know nothing about it.”

Doyle glanced swiftly at the detective lieutenant who had accompanied him. “Well, we figured you’d want to know,” he mumbled.

Demetrios pulled his bright yellow dressing-gown more closely around his shoulders, shivered slightly, nodded.

They were in Demetrios’ small apartment on Seventy-sixth Street. He’d been in bed, asleep; Doyle and the lieutenant had pounded on the door for three or four minutes before they’d succeeded in waking him.

The detective lieutenant stood up, stretched, yawned extravagantly.

Someone knocked at the door.

Doyle opened it and Green came in. He nodded to Doyle and the lieutenant, jerked his head at Demetrios.

“I don’t know this gent, but I want to have a little talk with him,” he said. “Will somebody please introduce me?”

Demetrios stared at him unpleasantly. “Is this guy a dick?”

Doyle grinned, shook his head. “Huh-uh. This is St. Nick Green. He’s a nice fella. You two ought to know each other.”

Demetrios stood up angrily. “What the hell you mean coming into my house like this?” He whirled on Doyle and the lieutenant. “You, too. You got a warrant? I don’t know nothing about Costain—”

Doyle clucked: “Tch, tch, such a temper!” He smiled at Green. “Don’t mind him. We woke him up an’ he’s pouting.”

Green sat down on the arm of a chair.

“Speaking of Costain,” he said softly, “has he turned up yet?” He turned to Doyle. “Something tells me he wasn’t at Tony’s and that he’s still in one piece.”

They were all looking at Green; Demetrios and the lieutenant with more or less puzzled expressions, Doyle with a broad grin.

Doyle laughed. “You’re a little behind the times, Nicky,” he boomed. “They found what was left of Costain on the New York Central tracks at a Hundred an’ Twenty-first Street a little while ago. No mistake about it this time. He was identified by a lot of papers an’ stuff in his pockets.”

The lieutenant said: “That’s why we woke up his nibs, here. We thought he might know something about it.”

Demetrios turned and closed the window savagely. “I don’t know nothing about it,” he snarled. “I told Lew I didn’t want no part of it.. I been in bed since ten o’clock an’ got a witness to prove it. There’s been three phone calls through the switchboard, so the operator knows I was in.”

Green asked gently: “Told Lew you didn’t want any part of what?”

“Any part of nothing! Me an’ him was washed up. He’s been screwy for the last week. He thought everybody was trying to double-cross him.”

Green purred: “Everybody probably was.”

Doyle repeated: “Any part of what, Demetrios?”

Demetrios sat down. “He was tipped off yesterday that Gino an’ Tony were juggling the books. One of Tony’s barbers called him an’ said instead of the syndicate going into the red like it’s supposed to been going the last few weeks, it’s been cleaning up important money. Costain never paid any attention to the business. He didn’t have no head for figures. He furnished the original bankroll an’ trusted Gino an’ Tony to take care of the business.”