Dark Maze

property owners just hanging on by their fingernails to money-losers in Astroland—owners with nothing left but pride and a sense of tradition—they sell out to Johnny Halo Enterprises.”
    “Naturally believing that means Johnny Halo himself,” Ruby said, finishing my thought.
    “Sure. They know Halo’s a creep, but he happens to have money and, as lousy as he is, he’s at least willing to be the keeper of the carny flame.”
    Ruby added, “And they figure sometimes in this world you have to deal with the devil—especially to keep the Prescott types from stealing your soul.”
    “And so that was Halo’s lie.”
    “That’s some convincing act,” Ruby said.
    “Not everybody bought it, remember.”
    “Well, no. Certainly not whoever killed him.”
    “And certainly not the other liar.”
    “The other?” Ruby stopped herself then and, judging by the earnest set to her face, she started thinking fast about all the crazy angles to the messy story I had been feeding her, one bite at a time. Finally she said, “You’re talking about the dwarf?”
    “What makes you think that?” But my expression told her she had guessed right.
    She said, “Because the irony fits, I guess. Why should Halo be taking the only pose in all this? Here’s Big Stuff the dwarf with his handbills, shilling for Wendell Prescott’s dreams of casino glitz and outdoing his little brother Daniel and all. So, you’re saying Big Stuff is a liar, too?”
    “It’s what I’m thinking,” I said. “What I’m saying is, there’s more than irony behind it.”
    “Like what more?”
    “One day, Big Stuff went down to Prescott’s place and asked lots of questions that Prescott didn’t want answered.“
    “How do you know that?”
    “While I was rattling Prescott, he let it slip between a few drinks,” I said. “I really didn’t think too much about it until just now.”
    Ruby waved for the waiter. She said, “Think about this: how hard would it have been for Big Stuff to find out exactly what you did about Halo being Prescott’s front man?“
    “Not especially hard, I imagine. Big Stuff is short on stature, but not brains.”
    “And something else,” Ruby said. “What’s the chance of Big Stuff being in touch with Picasso, despite what he says to the contrary?”
    “The chances are good. He’s a liar, after all.”
    “Sure he is. Then he’s also maybe the one guy in this whole cast of characters who could lead you straight to Picasso, wherever he is.”
    “Could be,” I said. “But then, there could be others in the cast who know . .
    The waiter arrived. He cleared away our dishes and made so much noise about it there was no sense to us talking. When he was through, Ruby ordered another wine and I another seltzer.
    “Chastity!” Ruby suddenly said. She looked up at the painting behind the bar—of Angelo in his white shirt and black vest, of Celia in green. “Chastity’s got Celia’s hat. She had to get it from the killer, or from Picasso. Or Chastity’s the killer!”
    “Nobody knows about the missing green hat, except the killer,” I said. “And the killer wouldn’t be wearing it. That would be nuts.”
    “And you think Chastity the whore is sane?”
    “I don’t know.” I thought about Chastity’s tight smile, the one that came to her when I had questioned her at the Seashore. “But I do think she knows or suspects lots more than she’s saying.”
    We were silent for a couple of long minutes, both trying hard to break through the haze of so many unsettled and incoherent facts. “You know,” Ruby said finally, “you’re back at square one. You’ve still got to find out where Picasso is squatting. That’s the meaning of this whole thing.“
    “Don’t I know it.”
    “I have this terrible feeling he’s right under your nose somewhere, right here in Hell’s Kitchen,” Ruby said. “I mean, didn’t Picasso tell you outright that he’d been following you around here for months?”
    “Yes.”
    “Well! Then he’s got to be here in the neighborhood.“
    “Of course he is. That’s easy. But take a look around here someday—look at the vacant tenements and warehouses, blocks and blocks of them. It’s not like it was when I was a kid here, that’s for sure. It’s all different, all empty. It would take months to search all the empty places in Hell’s Kitchen.”
    Months and maybe years to search the empty places of my youth in Hell’s Kitchen; months and years to search the hollow