Paul Cain
Pineapple

THE MAN IN THE dark-brown camel's-hair coat turned east against the icy wind. Near First Avenue he cut diagonally across the deserted street towards an electric sign: Tony Maschio's Day and Night Tonsorial Parlor.

A step or so beyond the sign, just outside the circle of warm yellow light from the shop, he stopped and put down the suitcase he was carrying, produced a cigarette and a lighter. He stood close to the building with his back to the wind, flicked the lighter several times without producing a flame, then turned back into the wind and went on towards First Avenue.

He forgot his suitcase. It sat in the darkness just under the corner of Tony's plate-glass window and if anyone had been close enough to it they might have heard it ticking between screaming gusts of wind--merrily, or ominously, depending upon whether one took it for the ticking of a cheap alarm clock or the vastly more intricate and alarming tick of a time-bomb.

The man walked up First Avenue to Thirteenth. He got into a cab on the northwest corner, said, “Grand Central,” and leaned back and looked at his watch.

It was nine minutes after one.

At sixteen minutes after one Tony Maschio came out of the backroom, washed his hands, whistling a curiously individual version of “O Sole Mio,” and turned to grin cheerily at the big bald man who sat reading a paper with his feet propped up on the fender of the stove.

“You are next, Mister Maccunn,” he chirped brightly.

Tony Maschio looked like a bird, a white-faced bird with a bushy halo of black feathers on his head; he spoke with an odd twittering lilt, like a bird.

Maccunn folded his paper carefully and unfolded his big body as careful from the chair, stood up. He was about fifty-five, a very heavily built, heavily jowled Scot with glistening shoe-button eyes, a snow-white walrus mustache.

He lumbered over and sat down in Number One Chair, observed in a squeaky voice that contrasted strangely with his bulk:

“It's a cold, cold night.”

For eight years Maccunn had come to Tony's every Friday night at around this time; for eight years his greeting, upon being invited into Tony's chair, had been: “It's a cold night,” or “It's a hot night,” or “It's a wet night,” or whatever the night might be. When it was any of these things to an extreme degree he would repeat the adjectives in honor of the occasion. Tony agreed that it was a “cold, cold night” and asked his traditional question in turn, with a glittering smile:

“Haircut?”

Maccunn did not have so much as a pin-feather hair on his broad and shining head. He shook it soberly, as was his eight-year habit, closed his eyes, and Tony took up his shears and began trimming the enormous mustache with deft and graceful gusto.

Angelo, who presided over Number Two Chair, was industriously shaving the slack chin of a slight gray-faced youth in overalls. Giuseppe, Number Three, had gone out for something to eat. Giorgio, Number Four, was sitting in his chair, nodding over an ancient number of “The New Art Models Weekly.” There were no other customers in the shop.

At nineteen minutes after one the telephone rang.

Maschio put down his shears and comb and started to answer it.

Angelo said: “If that's for me, boss--tell her to wait a minute.”

Maschio nodded and put his hand out towards the receiver, and the telephone and wall came out to meet him, the whole side of the shop twisted and curled and was a smothering sheet of white flame, and pain. He felt his body torn apart as if it were being torn slowly and he thought “God!--please stop it!”--and then he didn't feel any more, or think any more.

Maccunn raised his head once and looked down at the right side of his chest and it seemed curiously flat, curiously distant; he lowered his head and was still. Angelo moaned.

The wind was like an icy wall.

In the reporters' room of the Ninth Precinct Police Station, Nick Green was playing cooncan with Blondie Kessler, when the Desk Sergeant yelled from the next room:

“Blondie! Pineapple at Tony Maschio's Barber Shop on Seventh--nothin' left but a grease-spot!”

Kessler put his cards face down on the table and stood up slowly.

He said very simply: “Dear, sweet Jesus!”

Green looked up at him with elaborately skeptical disdain. “Every time I get a swell hand,” he muttered plaintively, “something happens so you have an excuse to run out on me.”

Kessler, moving towards the door, yipped: “Come on.”

Nicholas, sometimes “St. Nick,” Green was thirty-six-- with the smooth tanned skin, bright China-blue eyes of twenty, the snowy white hair of sixty. He was tall and slim and angular, and his more or less severe taste in clothes was violently relieved by a predilection for flaming-red neckties.

His nickname derived from his rather odd ideas about philanthropy. He had been at one time or another a tent-show actor, a newspaperman, gambler, gun-runner, private detective and a few more ill-assorted what-nots, and that wide experience had given him decidedly revolutionary convictions as to who was deserving and who was not.

A stroke of luck combined with one of his occasional flashes of precise intuition had enabled him to snatch a fortune from a falling stock-market and for three years he had used his money and the power it carried to do most of the things young millionaires don't do. He numbered legmen, Park Avenue debutantes, pickpockets, touts, bank robbers and bank presidents, wardheelers and international confidence-men among his wide and varied circle of friends, and he had played Santa Claus to more than a few of them at one time or another. He found the devious twistings and turnings of politics, the complicated intrigues of the New York underworld exciting, spent more, of his time in night courts than in night-clubs and was a great deal prouder of his accuracy with a Colt .45 than he was of his polo.

He got up and followed Blondie Kessler out of the Reporters' Room and down the corridor. In his car--a black and shiny and powerful coupe--they careened around the corner and roared north. Green swerved to miss a sleepily meandering cab by inches, asked:

“Now, about this Maschio?”

Blondie was a police-reporter on the Star-Telegram. His hair was as black as St. Nick's was white. He was a squat stocky Dutchman almost as broad as he was long and he had a habit of staccato, almost breathless expression, particularly when he was a little excited.

“Tony Maschio is--or was--Gino's brother. He's run a barber shop where a lot of the town's big shots go to have their fringes trimmed for eleven or twelve years, an' he's been partners with Gino an' Lew Costain in a high-powered gambling syndicate on the side. His shop was a little bit of a two-by-four joint, but Tony an' his hand-picked barbers were artists and it was usually full of names from Wall Street or Park Row.”

Kessler was silent a moment; and Green invited: “And . . .”

“And--Bruce Maccunn, my Managing Editor, has been dropping in at Tony's for a mustache trim an' a mudpack every Friday night for as long as I can remember. I've located him there a half-dozen times in the last two or three years--late Friday nights.”

Green whistled softly. “And . . .”

Kessler had no time to answer; the car slid to the curb across the street from the pile of smoking ruins that had been Maschio's Barber Shop. In spite of the hour, the glacial wind, the usual gallery of morbidly curious had gathered. Several firemen, policemen, and an ambulance squad from the Emergency Hospital were industriously combing the debris of bricks and steel and charred wood.

Kessler was the first reporter on the scene; he scurried about from one to another after information. Green strolled over to join two men who were standing a little way down the street in earnest conversation. One of them was Doyle, a plainclothesman whom he knew slightly, and the other was a wild-eyed Italian who was explaining with extravagant gestures that if he hadn't lingered in the corner lunchroom for a second cup of coffee he, too, would have been blown to bits. He, it appeared, was Giuseppe Picelli, Tony's Number Three Barber, and he'd been on his way back to the shop when the explosion occurred.

Green jerked his head towards the heap of wreckage. “How many have they found?”

“Don't know.” Doyle chewed his unlighted cigar noisily. “Most of 'em are in pieces--little pieces. We've identified Tony an' one of his barbers, but there's a lot of pieces left over. This guy”--he nodded at Picelli--“says Bruce Maccunn was there--came in jus' before he left.”

Picelli bobbed his head up and down, jabbered excitedly: “Sure, Mister Maccunn came in as I went out--an' there was another fellow--I don't know him. . . . An' Tony an' Angelo an' Giorgio . . .”

“That all?” Green Was blowing hard in his bare hands to warm them.

“That's all were there when I left--but Gino an' Mister Costain were coming over. Tony was expecting them. . . .”

Green and Doyle looked at each other.

Doyle grunted: “If Lew Costain got there for the blow-off it makes my job about eight hundred percent harder. I don't guess there are more than eight hundred people in New York that'd like to see him in little pieces.”

Kessler galloped over. He was a little green around the mouth and eyes.

“Mac g-got it!” he stuttered. “They just dug him out--or wh-what's left of him. . . .”

Doyle tried to light his cigar in the screaming wind. “Why did Gino Maschio an' Costain get it,” he growled. “Maybe there's not enough left of them to find out, but if Picelli here knows his potatoes they were in the shop or on their way to the shop--an' if they were on their way they would've showed up by now.”

Kessler gurgled: “Where's a telephone?”

“There's one in the lunchroom around the corner on Second Avenue.” Picelli waved his arm dramatically.

A police car, its siren moaning shrilly, pulled up and a half dozen assorted detectives piled out.

Kessler grabbed Green's arm, shouted, “Come on, Nick--I gotta telephone an' I wanna talk to you.” They hurried towards Second Avenue.

Green grinned down at the tugging, puffing reporter.

“You look like a crazed bloodhound,” he said. “Don't tell me you've got another one of those red-hot Kessler theories.”

“Theory my eye! I've got the whole business--the whole bloody shebang!”

“Uh-huh.” Green's grunt was elaborately incredulous.

Kessler snorted. “Listen, John Sallust was released from Atlanta three days ago!”

“So what?”

Kessler's mouth made an amazed O. “So what! So Bruce Maccunn was the man who rode Sallust--in the paper--an' finally stuck him for the Arbor Day Parade bombing nearly five years ago. So Sallust swore by the beards of Marx and Lenin he'd get Maccunn. So, after a half-dozen appeals and new trials and whatnot he finally got a commutation and what does he do but make good and plant a pineapple under the man who put him behind the bars!”

They turned the corner.

Green murmured softly: “Blondie, my child--you're just as dippy as a bedbug--an especially dippy bedbug.”

Kessler stopped suddenly, stood with his arms expressively outstretched and said:

“For the love of God--do you mean to tell me you don't get it? Maccunn, more than anyone else, or all the rest of 'em put together, hung that rap on Sallust. The Government wanted to drop the case on insufficient evidence, but Maccunn hated radicals like poison an' wouldn't let 'em. His editorials yelled about corruption and anarchy and it finally worked. What's more natural than Sallust wanting to wipe Maccunn as soon as he got out?”

Green shook his head slowly. “Nothing's more natural,” he admitted. “Only I happen to know Sallust a little and he's much too bright a guy to do anything like this three days after he's sprung--or any other time.”

Kessler's mouth flattened to a thin, sarcastic line.

“I followed his case very closely,” Green went on, “and he was railroaded if anybody ever was. He's really a swell guy who has his own ideas about the way the country should be run. I'll bet he never saw a bomb in his life.”

“Nuts.” Kessler half turned. “It all fits like a glove. He's an anarchist an' those boys say it with dynamite. He couldn't blow up the whole paper--that was too big an order--and Maccunn never lit long enough at his home for that to be practical, but he went to Tony Maschio's every Friday night between twelve-thirty and one-thirty. It's open and shut.”

Green smiled sadly, shook his head, murmured: “Mostly shut.”

“That's my story an' I'll stick to it.” Kessler turned and went into the lunchroom.

Green walked slowly back towards his car, whispered into the wind:

“An especially dippy bedbug.”

The hands of the big clock over the information desk pointed to one forty-one. The great concourse of Grand Central Station was speckled with the usual scattered crowd.

On the wide balcony above the west side of the concourse, the man in the dark-brown camel's-hair coat who had forgotten his suitcase in front of Tony Maschio's walked slowly back and forth. The collar of his coat was turned up and his hands were thrust deep in his pockets; his large dark eyes were fixed on Gate Twenty-seven, which led to the one-forty-five Boston train, and his head turned slowly as he walked back and forth.

He was a powerfully built man of uncertain age and as much of his face as could be seen above the heavy coat collar was unnaturally flushed.

Suddenly he stopped pacing and leaned forward against the marble balustrade. He had caught sight of a man of about his own build and coloring--moving swiftly across the concourse. The man's most striking features were the grace with which he moved and his bright yellowish-green velour hat. He flashed a ticket in front of the conductor and disappeared through Gate Twenty-seven.

The man in the dark-brown coat hurried down the great stairway, across to one of the ticket windows. When he turned away he held a little piece of pasteboard and he strode with it through Gate Twenty-seven. He walked the length of the train to the first coach back of the baggage car and swung aboard.

He found the man he was looking for in the smoking car of the third Pullman back. There was no one else in the smoking room; the porter was making up a berth at the other end of the car.

The man in the dark-brown coat held the curtain aside with one arm and leaned against the side of the narrow doorway.

He said: “Hello.”

The other swarthy man was sitting next to the window, reading a paper. He put the paper down and looked up and his color changed slowly, curiously, until his face was almost as yellow and as green as his jauntily cocked hat. He did not speak.

From outside, the conductor's voice came in to them: “All aboard. . . .”

The man in the dark-brown coat smiled a little; he whispered:

“Let's walk back and look at the lights.”

The train began to move, slowly.

The other man's empty eyes were on one of the big pockets of the brown coat where something besides the big man's hand bulged the material. He did not move, seemed incapable of moving.

The man in the brown coat repeated: “Let's walk back. . . .” Then he crossed swiftly and grabbed the other's coat-collar with his free hand and jerked him to his feet, shoved him to the door and out into the narrow corridor; they went towards the rear of the train.

They went through four cars, most of them with the berths made up and curtains drawn, encountered only a heavily breathing drunk in pajamas who had mislaid something, and two sleepy porters. The last car was partly compartments, partly observation car. As they entered it, a red-haired brakeman passed them without looking at them and went forward. They went to the observation rear end and the man in the green hat said: “This is far enough, Lew, if you want to talk.”

The man in the brown coat smiled. His right hand moved the coat pocket suggestively. He nodded his head sidewise, erupted, “Out on the platform, Gino. Then no one will hear us.”

Gino took one glance at the bulged coat pocket, and opened the door to the observation platform.

The train was just coming out of the tunnel to the elevated tracks and the rosy glow of midtown Manhattan was reflected by the gray wind-driven clouds. The wind slashed like an icy knife and green-hat mechanically turned up his collar, shivered violently.

Following him, the man in the brown coat pulled the door shade down--both window shades were drawn--and closed the door tightly. He jerked his hand from his pocket. There was a momentary flash of something bright and glittering as he swung his hand up and down in a short arch against the other's skull. The hat went whirling away into the wind and darkness and the man sank to his knees, toppled forward to crush his face against the floor.

The man in the brown coat knelt beside him and went through his pockets swiftly, carefully. In the inside pocket of his suitcoat he found a thick packet of currency, slipped it into his own inside pocket.

A new sound, the faint stutter of an incoming train on the adjoining track, grew above the roar of the wind. The man glanced ahead, around the corner of the car, seemed for a moment to be calculating the distance away of the approaching headlight, then stooped again, swiftly.

Hurriedly he stripped off the man's overcoat, then his own. He struggled into the former--a rather tight-fitting tweed Chesterfield--and somehow forced the other man's arms and shoulders into his own big dark-brown camel's hair; then he finished transferring the contents of his own inside pockets--several letters, a monogrammed cigarette case and other odds and ends--to the inside pockets of the unconscious man.

The stutter of the approaching train grew to a hoarse scream. He boosted the limp body onto his shoulder, stood up, and when the blinding headlight of the train on the adjoining track was about twenty-five or thirty feet away, he dumped his burden over the side-rail of the observation platform down onto the track in front of the onrushing locomotive.

Then he turned swiftly and went back through the observation car. As he reached the third car forward the train slowed and he heard a far-off voice shout:

“Hundred an' Twenty-fifth Street.”

When the train stopped and a porter opened the doors of the vestibule between the third and fourth car, the man, now in a tight-fitting tweed Chesterfield, swung off and sauntered down the stairs that led from the station to the street.

As he crossed the street towards a cab he heard the conductor's thin far off wail above the wind: “All aboard. . . .”

He climbed into the cab, snapped: “Three thirty-two West Ninetieth--and make it fast.”

Green lit a match and examined the mailboxes carefully. The second one on the left rewarded him with a dingy label upon which:

JOHN DARRELL SALLUST PAULA SALLUST

had been typewritten in bright-blue ink.

He rang the bell under the label and after a minute the lock of the outside door buzzed; he went in and climbed two flights of narrow stairs to Apartment B5. The door was ajar; he knocked and a man's high-pitched voice called:

“Come in.”

Green went into a very large and bare studio, dimly lighted by two floor-lamps in opposite corners and a small but very bright desk lamp on a wide central table.

The high-pitched voice: “Well, Mister Green--this is an unexpected pleasure.”

Green took off his hat and went to the wide table. He bowed slightly.

“Might you, by any chance,” he inquired blandly, “have been out this evening--since, say eleven o'clock?”

John Sallust was a thin, consumptive-looking Englishman with a high bulging forehead, stringy mouse-colored hair, and cold gray eyes, so light in color that they appeared almost white. He sat straddling a chair, his chin resting on his clasped hands on the back of the chair.

“I not only might have,” he said evenly--“I was. I only got home about a quarter of an hour ago.”

Green glanced at the square heavy watch on the inside of his left wrist; it was fifty-two minutes after one.

Sallust turned his head. “This is Paula, my sister. This is Nick Green. You've probably heard me speak of him.”

She was half sitting, half lying on a low couch against one of the long walls of the room, a very dark, very diminutive girl with porcelain-white skin, a deep-red mouth and large oddly opaque eyes.

She nodded and Green bowed again slightly.

“We went to a theater.” She sat up slowly. “We went to a theater and John brought me home afterwards--it must have been about ten-thirty--and then he went for a walk.”

Green smiled. “That's simply dandy. Now, if you two can jump into your hats and coats and the three of us can get out of here in about one minute flat”--he raised one snowy eyebrow and grinned at Sallust--“you won't have to take another of those very unpleasant trips to jail.”

Paula leapt to her feet, almost screamed: “Jail!”

Sallust's thin face twisted to a wry smile. “You choose a rather bizarre time to joke, Mister Green,” he said softly.

Green was looking at his watch. “Maybe in two minutes,” he whispered as if to himself.

Paula crossed to him swiftly.

“What are you talking about?” she gulped. “What is it?”

“I haven't time to tell you about it, now. Take my word for it that the Law will be here in a split-jiffy to arrest your brother for the murder of Bruce Maccunn and a half-dozen or so innocent bystanders. Let's go first and talk about it afterwards. ...”

Sallust did not move. His eyes moved swiftly to his sister once, then back to Green.

He muttered: “No.”

Green stared at him blankly. “No? No what?”

Sallust shook his head a little. “I returned three days ago,” he said gently, “from the better part of five years in prison, I was as I believe you call it, framed. I was accused by lies, tried by lies, convicted by lies. . . .”

He cleared his throat and straightened in the chair, gazed very intently at Green.

“I know you very slightly, Mister Green. I have been led to believe at one time or another that you are in some way sympathetic to our cause, but I have just returned from a painful five-year lesson in misplaced trust. I do not know what you are talking about, now, but I know that I have done no wrong and I shall stay exactly where I am.”

It was entirely silent for a moment and then Paula's voice rang softly, tremulously: “Perhaps you're making a mistake, John. Mister Green is--” She stopped.

Green put his hand up and rubbed the heel of it slowly down the left side of his face. His eyes were fixed more or less vacantly on a small turkey-red cigarette box on the table. Very suddenly he went forward and as Sallust sprang to his feet, Green's arm moved in a long looping arc, his knuckles smacked sharply against Sallust's chin; Sallust crumpled and fell to his knees, clutched blindly at the chair, went limp.

Paula was too surprised to scream, or move; she stood with her hands to her mouth, her great eyes fixed on Green in startled amazement.

Green mumbled, “Sorry,” shortly, stooped and swept Sallust's slight figure up into his arms and moved towards the door. “Come on,” he grunted over his shoulder, “and make it snappy.”

She followed in stunned silence; at the door he turned and jerked his head at her coat and she took it up from a chair and put it on like a somnambulist motivated and moved by something unknown, something irresistible.

The bleak Greenwich Village street was deserted; Green carried Sallust across the glistening sidewalk and put him in the car, hurried around to climb in behind the wheel. Paula stood hesitantly on the sidewalk; the cold air had brought back her momentarily dimmed senses and she reflected that it was not too late to scream, reflected further, after glancing up and down the street, that it was more or less useless. She got into the car and closed the door, put her arm around Sallust and waited.

Just east of Eighth Avenue, Green slowed and pulled over to the curb to allow two speeding police-cars to pass, then turned and watched them skid to the curb outside the building where the Sallusts lived.

He grinned at Paula. “My timing wasn't so hot,” he observed. “The Law was about three minutes less efficient than I figured.”

She turned from watching the men swarm out of the cars and run into the house. Her inclination to scream was definitely gone; she tried to return his smile.

“What is it all about?” she whispered. “I don't understand . . .”

“Neither do I yet.” He let the clutch in and the car rounded the corner, whirred north on Eighth Avenue. “I'm sorry I had to resort to that to get your brother out, but I thought he got a raw deal before and I want to do what I can to prevent his getting another one. After five years on the inside he shouldn't mind a sock on the jaw if it saves him even one night in the cooler.”

Green's apartment was on East Sixty-first; the elevator boy helped him with Sallust, who was beginning to stir and moan feebly; Green explained that he was very drunk and when they reached his apartment on the top floor they put Sallust on one of the divans in the huge living room. The elevator boy went away.

Green turned to Paula. “He'll be all right in a little while,” he said. “The main thing is that he's not to show up outside of this place until certain matters--I'm not quite sure what, yet, so I can't tell you about them--are straightened out. Do you trust me enough to help, and to see to it that he stays here?”

She nodded.

Green smiled slightly. “Your word?”

She nodded again, returned the faint shadow of a smile.

He went towards the door. “I'll be back or give you a ring as soon as I can. Make yourself at home. If you get hungry or thirsty try the icebox.”

He went out and closed the door.

Downstairs, he admonished the night clerk. “There're a man and woman in my apartment and I want them to stay there. I think they will, but if they get tough call Mike and let him handle them.”

The clerk nodded; he was accustomed to more or less curious orders from Mister Green. Mike was the janitor, a husky Norwegian who had performed odd jobs of a strong-arm nature for Green upon more than one occasion.

Green turned in the doorway. “And if they make any telephone calls, keep a record of who they call and what they have to say.”

The clerk nodded again. Green went out into Sixty-first Street and walked to a drugstore.

At eighteen minutes after two the phone on Blondie Kessler's desk jingled cheerily for the tenth time in twenty-five minutes.

He whirled from his typewriter, picked up the receiver and yelped: “Hello.”

Green's voice hummed silkily over the wire: “How many more identifiable pieces have they dug out of Tony's? And how's that red-hot Kessler theory coming along?”

Kessler scowled sourly into the transmitter.

“That Kessler theory is holding its head up and taking nourishment very nicely, thank you!” he barked with elaborate irony. “We found a chunk of the fuse with a foundry label on it, a place in Jersey--”

Green interrupted: “Don't tell me. Let me guess. . . . Sallust used to work there, or anyway, he used to live in Jersey, or maybe he went to Jersey once to visit his aunt.”

Kessler snorted: “All right, all right. I say Sallust is a cinch for this job, you say not. I'll bet--I'll bet you fifty dollars.”

Green snapped: “Bet.”

Kessler cackled shrilly. “The clincher is that Sallust and his sister took a powder about a minute and a half before the boys in blue swept in. Their next-door neighbors heard them go out and from the timing it looks like it was a tip.”

Green sighed. “Maybe I'm the bedbug, after all,” he murmured. “And how about my first and most important question--what else have they dug up?”

“Nothing more that they could make sense of. They've got a lot of arms and legs that might have been Gino or Costain or who-have-you.” Green's voice droned on: “I'm still curious about whether Gino and Costain got to Tony's before the fireworks. Has anybody tried to locate them?”

“Uh-huh. Gino was supposed to leave for Boston on a late train, after he went to Tony's. A business trip according to his wife. She don't know whether he reached Tony's or whether he made the train or not. She's going nuts. Then I reached Costain's girl and she said Lew started for Tony's about midnight, said he was going to stop by a couple places first. She hasn't heard from him since. She's jumping up and down and yelling and screaming, too, and calling me back every two minutes.”

There was silence for several seconds, then Green's voice concluded dreamily:

“Don't forget, Blondie, that Lew Costain has, or had, more enemies than any other picked dozen highbinders in this town. Maccunn had one, or at least you're trying to hang his chill on one. Whether Costain reached Tony's or not, he was headed there, and in some strange way that seems more important to me than the fact that Sallust wanted Maccunn's blood. With all due respect to the Kessler theory, of course. . . . And don't forget the fifty. . . .”

The phone clicked, an electric period.

Kessler looked like he was going to take a large bite out of the transmitter for a minute, then he hung up slowly and turned back to his typewriter with enormous disgust.

Haley, the City Editor, was working feverishly, trying very hard not to whistle. He, for one, had hated Maccunn as a slave driver, and now it looked like he'd be moving into the big oak-paneled office on the seventh floor and be writing M.E. after his name.

He looked up as Kessler hung up the receiver, yelled: “Anything new?”

Kessler shook his head. “Nothing new, only that guy Green is losing his mind.”

Solly Allenberg, short and fat, was sitting in his cab near the corner of Forty-ninth and Broadway, when Green crossed the street to him.

Allenberg stopped short in the middle of a yawn and his face lit up like a chubby Christmas tree.

“Hello, Mister Green,” he croaked heartily. “Where you been keeping yourself?”

Green leaned on the door.

“I've been around,” he said. “How've you been doing Solly? How are the kids?”

“Swell, Mister Green, just swell. The wife was asking about you just the other night. I told her--”

Green interrupted quietly: “Lew Costain's been murdered.”

Solly's thick mouth fell open slowly. “Murdered? What the hell you talking about?”

Green's head bobbed up and down.

“He was at Tony Maschio's tonight when the firecracker went off--he and Gino. . . .”

Solly said: “I was just reading about it in the paper, but it didn't say nothing about Mister Costain.”

“They hadn't identified him when they snapped that Extra out.”

Green reached past Solly and clicked down the taxi-meter flag. “Let's take a ride,” he suggested--“only let's take it inside, where it's warm and where we can get a drink.”

Solly tumbled out of the cab and they crossed the slippery sidewalk and went into the Rialto Bar. They both ordered rye. Green studied Solly's reflection in the big mirror behind the bar.

“How long have you been working for Lew?” he began. Solly hesitated and Green went on swiftly: “Listen. I knew him pretty well, liked him. I intend to find who rubbed him out and you can help me, if you will. . . .”

Solly gulped his drink. “Sure,” he blurted--“I wanta help.” He glanced at his empty glass and Green nodded to the bartender to fill it up.

“I never really worked for him,” Solly went on. “He was scared of cars--scared to drive his own car in town. He got the batty idea two, three years ago I was a swell, careful driver, so he's been riding in my cab most of the time since. Whenever he'd light anywhere for awhile or go home an' go to bed or anything like that, he'd tell me an' I'd pick up what I could on the side. He paid me a flat rate of a saw-buck a day no matter what the meter read an' some days he wouldn't use me at all, so it worked out swell.”

“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 v's. “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.”

The lieutenant muttered: “Christ! what a character shark! Trusting Gino and Tony!”

“They were going to take a powder, according to Lew's info,” Demetrios went on. “Gino was going to shag a boat out of Boston for Havana an' Tony was going to Florida by rail an' meet him there. Between them they were supposed to have about four hundred grand. Lew told me about it an' said he'd made a date to meet both of them at Tony's at a quarter after one tonight. He wanted me to go along, but I couldn't see it. It looked like a dumb play. Anyway, me an' him was washed up and I been in bed since ten o'clock.”

The lieutenant snapped: “You're good enough for us, Demetrios, as a material witness. Get on your clothes.”

“That's what I get for trying to help you dumb bastards,” Demetrios bleated. He got up and went into the bathroom.

Green stood up, crossed quietly to Doyle and the lieutenant, whispered: “Don't pick him up. Tell him to stand by for a call in the morning and let him go. I'll lay six, two, and even he doesn't go back to bed, but goes out. We can wait outside and if he doesn't lead us somewhere I'm a Tasmanian watchmaker.”

Doyle looked doubtful, but the lieutenant seemed to like the idea.

He called: “Let it go, Demetrios. But stick around for a call in the morning.”

Demetrios appeared in the bathroom doorway in his pajamas. He looked a little bewildered.

“Can I go back to bed?”

Doyle said: “Sure. Get some sleep. You'll probably need it. After all, we wouldn't be getting nowhere in figuring out what this's all about if it wasn't for you.”

Demetrios nodded glumly, went over and sat down on the edge of the bed.

Doyle grunted, “G'night,” and he and Green and the lieutenant filed out.

Demetrios sat silent for two or three minutes and then got up and went to the door, opened it and looked up and down the hall. Then he closed the door and crossed to the private telephone that stood on the stand beside the bed, beside the regular house phone. He sat down on the bed again and dialed a Schuyler number, said:

“Hello, honey. Listen. The big news just came through. They found 'im on the New York Central tracks, uptown. Uh-huh. I guess he left the pinwheel at Tony's an' picked up Gino on the Boston train. Only Gino saw him first. . . . A couple coppers just stopped by an' told me. They thought I might like to know.”

He laughed quietly. “Sure, I gave 'em enough so they know he blasted Tony's. They can figure the rest of it out for themselves. Now, listen. They're probably waiting for me outside, but I'm going to duck out through the basement.” He glanced at the alarm clock on the dresser. “It's a quarter of three. I'll be over there in half an hour at the outside unless they tail me an' then I'll have to lose 'em. You throw some things in a bag an' be ready to leave. We'll take a little trip. Some place where it's cool. . . . Okay, baby-- 'Bye.”

He hung up, dressed swiftly and took a traveling-bag out of a closet, began stuffing clothes into it.

Green's car was parked on the other side of Broadway, on Seventy-sixth. He went into an all-night drugstore on the corner and called the Star-Telegram, asked for Kessler.

Kessler grunted, “Hello,” wearily, snapped out of it when he recognized Green's voice.

“Hey, Nick! I just heard somebody took a shot at you,” he yelped. “You all right?”

“I'm okay. I'll tell you all about it when I see you.”

“That's swell!” Kessler whooped. “Everything's swell! I just put the Star-Telegram exclusive on Sallust to bed. What a story! It oughta be on the streets in an hour.”

Green said softly: “Blondie, if you want to keep your job, and keep the Star out of an awful jam, kill it.” Then, before Kessler could answer, he went on: “I just left Demetrios' apartment. He's the tall good-looking Greek that worked for Costain. Doyle and his partner are waiting for him to show, to tail him, but I'm afraid he'll get past them and I have a very merry hunch where he's going.”

Kessler interrupted: “But listen, Nick--”

“You listen.” Green's tone was ominous. “Hold that story for at least an hour, and leap up to Three Thirty-one West Ninetieth with some Law, fast. I'll be outside, or if I'm not, I'll be upstairs in Costain's apartment. Come up, and come quick. This is going to be the payoff on everything that's happened tonight and it'll make your Sallust story look like a want ad.”

“But listen. . . .” Kessler sounded like he was about to cry.

Green snapped: “I'm depending on you. Make it fast and make it quiet. And don't forget to bring along that fifty skins.”

He hung up the receiver and went out and got into his car drove to Amsterdam Avenue, up Amsterdam to Eighty-ninth, turned west. He parked just off Riverside Drive on Ninetieth, about a hundred and fifty feet west of the entrance to Three Thirty-one.

Then he lighted a cigarette and sat still and waited.

The man in the third-floor-front room at Three Thirty-two didn't smoke any more; he simply waited, his eyes at the slit under the window shade. Occasionally he leaned back in the big chair, but for only a few seconds at a time and only after ten minutes or so of rigid, wary immobility.

At four minutes after three someone knocked at the door. He got up and opened it swiftly. Giuseppe Picelli came in; the man went back to the window.

Picelli sat down, said dully: “Got Solly. Green got away. There was ice ...”

“There was ice,” the man at the window repeated slowly. “All right, there was ice. How long were they together?”

“Green came up to Solly--Solly was in his cab. They went into the bar and I called you. Two or three minutes after I came out of the booth, they came out. I went up to them on the sidewalk . . .”

“And there was ice.”

The man at the window stiffened suddenly, shaded his eyes from the dim light in the room. He peered intently through the slit for perhaps ten or fifteen seconds, then stood up and picked up his suit-coat and put it on.

“Come on, Joe. We're going places,” he said.

He took a big blue automatic out of the pocket of the tweed Chesterfield and stuck it against his stomach, under the belt, pulled the points of his vest down over it.

The two men went together out of the room and down two flights of stairs, out of the rooming house and across the street to Three Thirty-one.

The elevator boy stared wide-eyed at the man who had been sitting at the window.

“Jeeze, Mister Costain,” he stuttered. “I thought--Miss Neilan has been going crazy--calling up the newspapers every few minutes . . .”

Costain did not answer.

They got off at the fourth floor, went to the door of the front apartment on the right. Costain took a bunch of keys out of his pocket and unlocked it, opened it. They went in and closed the door.

June Neilan was a very pretty platinum blonde with wide blue eyes, orange lips that looked as if they had been put on to stay. She turned and stared at Costain and her creamy skin went gray.

Demetrios' hand moved swiftly upward across his chest and then he looked at the snub-nosed revolver in Picelli's hand, changed his mind and dropped his hands to his side, slowly.

Costain said: “Sit down.”

June Neilan walked unsteadily to the nearest chair, sat down. Demetrios stood still.

Costain went to Demetrios and reached inside his coat, jerked a .35 automatic out of a shoulder holster and handed it back to Picelli. Then he doubled up his right fist and swung hard at Demetrios' jaw. Demetrios moved backward a little and Costain's fist cut his cheek; two tiny drops of blood started out on the white skin just beneath the cheekbone.

Costain drew his fist back and swung again; this time his timing was better, there was a soft splat as his fist struck Demetrios' jaw, Demetrios reeled backward against the wall. Costain went after him, cocked his right again. June Neilan said, “Please don't, Lew,” dully. Costain's right fist ripped into Demetrios' throat, his left smashed his nose. Demetrios made a curious strangling sound and slid sidewise down the wall to the floor.

Costain was panting, his heavy florid face was purple. He drew his foot back and kicked Demetrios' face, hard, again and again; it made a soft, smacking sound like someone snapping their fingers in water and Demetrios' face darkened with glistening deep-red blood. Someone pounded on the door.

Costain did not seem to hear; he raised his foot and stamped on Demetrios' face so hard that the bones of the nose and cheek crunched like crumpled paper. Picelli whimpered: “Boss--there's somebody outside. . . .”

Costain did not turn his head; he panted: “Okay--let 'em be outside. I'm busy. ...”

The pounding came on the door again.

June Neilan was staring at Costain and Demetrios blindly; she jumped up suddenly and ran to the door. Picelli was a split-second too late. She turned the lock, the door swung open and Nick Green stood in the opening.

Costain turned from Demetrios and jerked the big automatic out of his belt, shot twice. June Neilan spun around as if a heavy unseen hand were on her shoulder, twisting her slight body.

Green felt the sleeve of his coat lift, tear, a hot stab of pain in the outer muscle of his left arm. He shot once from a little above the hip. Costain bent forward slowly as if in an extravagant bow; then he sank to one knee and raised his head, stared vacantly at June Neilan.

She was holding on to the edge of the door with her two hands. Her eyes went back in her head suddenly and her body folded; she fell.

Green came forward into the room.

Picelli was shivering violently and his face looked very pinched and small; his revolver fell to the floor and he raised his hands slowly.

Costain's mouth twisted upward a little to a kind of grin, he toppled sidewise and as he struck the floor he straightened his right arm until the muzzle of the big automatic was jammed into Demetrios' stomach.

The dark doorway was suddenly crowded with faces, men. Doyle and Kessler and two detectives from the Ninth Precinct Station came into the room. One of the detectives picked up Picelli's and Demetrios' guns, the other knelt beside June Neilan.

Doyle went past Green and stood looking down at Costain. Costain had emptied the big automatic into Demetrios' stomach; he rolled over and raised his head a little, grinned up at Doyle, then at Green.

“That was a good job,” he whispered. “That was the best job I've ever done. . . .”

His head fell back. Doyle stooped over him.

“He'll be all right, I think,” Green said slowly. “I tried to shoot him in the leg and in the shoulder. . . .” He turned to Kessler with a very faraway expression on his face. “I wonder why.”

The detective kneeling beside June Neilan looked up. “The gal hasn't got a scratch,” he mumbled. “She bumped her head on the door when she fell but that's all.”

Green said: “I guess she fainted. Costain's a lousy shot.”

He peeled off his overcoat and his suit coat, sat down and rolled up his shirtsleeve. The wound on the arm was slight, a crease; one of the detectives wrapped a clean handkerchief around it and tied it.

Kessler was staring blankly at Costain. “I still don't get it,” he stuttered. “How many times can you kill one guy? Who was the guy they--they found on the tracks?”

Doyle was at the phone.

Green smiled at Kessler. “That'd be Gino,” he said. “Picelli tipped Costain that Gino and Tony were running out on him with all the syndicate's dough. Costain left the ticker at Tony's and then caught up with Gino on the late Boston train. He probably got the bright idea that if he made it look like he'd been killed he could sneak back to a spot where he could watch the apartment, he might catch Demetrios and his girl friend in the act.”

Doyle hung up the receiver and turned to listen.

“He's probably been suspicious of them for a week or so,” Green went on. “That was his reason for keeping away from her until Demetrios showed. He planted his things on Gino and tossed him under the train; he wasn't sure it'd work or how long it'd take for 'em to find what was left of Gino, so he called Picelli and told him to check on it. Picelli checked and sure enough, the report had gone out that Costain's body had been found. Then all Costain had to do was wait for Demetrios to turn up to break the big news to the girl.”

Green rolled his shirtsleeve down and got up and put on his coat.

“Picelli shot Solly Allenberg tonight because Solly drove Costain to the corner of Bleecker and Thompson. That's about a half-block from where Maxie Sillmann lives and Maxie's the boy who specializes in plain and fancy pineapples. Costain wanted to be sure no one got to Solly because Solly knew a little bit too much about the whole business, and he probably had Picelli watching him. My guess is that Picelli called him back and told him Solly and I were in the bar and that I'd been at Tony's after the blast, so Costain told Picelli to let both of us have it.”

Green was looking at Picelli. Picelli nodded slightly.

Kessler had perked up amazingly; he suddenly dashed for the telephone.

Green said: “Wait a minute, Blondie. I've get a couple of important calls to make.”

He crossed to the telephone and sat down and called the Receiving Hospital, asked about Solly Allenberg. He waited a minute, then shook his head and whispered, “That's too bad,” hung up the receiver and looked at Kessler. “I'll take that fifty, now,” he said softly.