Dark Maze

its green and beige rug and softly lit floor lamps. At one end there were twin dressing tables with tiny light bulbs arcing over mirrors, a nearby sink and a clothes rack that held a top hat and a tuxedo and some women’s things on hangers. The other end of the room held a couple of cozy-looking easy chairs and an old velvet sofa with tassels and fringe. There was a small refrigerator and a table that held liquor and glasses, cigars and cigarettes and ashtrays, a black rotary telephone and newspapers from the last several days. I sat down in one of the chairs and Moe Stein settled into a corner of the sofa, lifted up his bird legs and stretched them out.
    He said, “So welcome to the Horny Poodle. What can we do for you, Mister... What’s your name, anyways?“
    “Hockaday.”
    “Mr. Hockaday.” He licked his lips like he could taste the name, then he gazed up at the ceiling as if in deep contemplation. “The name sounds sort of familiar. Ain’t I seen you someplace before?”
    “I doubt it,” I said. “But the other night I caught your mentalist act. Funny, I thought you looked like somebody I’d seen a long time ago.”
    “Oh, is that right?” Stein put his feet on the floor, leaned forward to the table and poured himself two fingers of bourbon and splashed it with water. He asked me, “Drink?” I passed.
    Stein sipped his bourbon and said, “Well, Mr. Hockaday, it’s a small world, ain’t it? Maybe we got some of the same kind of friends out in Vegas—the active kind?”
    “Or maybe the kind who aren’t so active anymore.” Stein gave me a suspicious look now, like Benny had looked at me earlier. He said, “How come my genius partner sent you back here to me? You want my autograph or what?” He laughed a snorty laugh.
    “Maybe later.” I did not laugh, which made Stein uncomfortable. “I’m here tonight to catch your show upstairs, which I guess means you’re going to have to decide if you want to clear me for the action.”
    Stein was coy. “What’s this action you’re talking about.“
    “Well, for one thing, Celia Furman tells me you run a pretty square craps table.”
    The ¿ass of bourbon slipped from Stein’s hand and landed in his lap, spilling all over the fly in his boxers. He stood up and brushed himself and pointed to the newspapers on the table and sputtered, “Hey! I know who in hell you are, you’re that cop they’re writing about!”
    I said calmly, “That’s correct.”
    “We got nothing going upstairs,” Stein said.
    “You’re operating a casino right in the middle of Times Square, which takes some real balls.”
    “Look...”
    “Cut it,” I said. “If I wanted, I could get a warrant in about ten minutes flat and close you down and bundle you and Benny off to Riker’s Island for the night. But maybe I want something else.”
    “What’s that?” Stein sat down. He poured himself more bourbon. I let him drink it down before answering him.
    Then I told him a couple of lies, which is kosher since the law only requires me to tell the truth when I am under oath in court. “I know all about your casino, from the late Johnny Halo. Even old Charlie Furman mentioned it once or twice, the crazy bastard.”
    He reacted to these names like they were stones being thrown at him. “Charlie! Oh God, Charlie!”
    And Stein now looked like something far more painful than a little bourbon and water had caught him in the crotch. His eyes darted around the room, like he was measuring off the distance between where he sat shaking and where he might go stick his head in case he had to heave. He said weakly, “I don’t understand... ”
    I took out my wallet and showed him the snapshot from the happy, carefree summer of ’54.
    Stein’s eyes filled with tears, and then the tears overflowed. He did not bother wiping them away, and the tears ran down his chest over his undershirt and collected in splotches on top of his pot belly. I let him hold the old snapshot. He looked at it for several seconds before handing it back to me and asking, “Where’d you get that?”
    “Off the late Celia Furman.”
    “Celia... Oh God, my sweet, sweet Celia!”
    I poured another two fingers of bourbon and water and gave it to Stein and he took it back in one swallow. He waited until he was calm again, or as calm as he would get that night. Then he said, “What do you want out of me, Hockaday?”
    “I want you to tell me a story.”
    “What makes you think I got a story to