Dark Maze

tell?”
    “Like I said, I think I can get a warrant in about ten minutes, and then you and Benny will be sleeping on steel cots up at Riker’s.”
    “That don’t faze me now.” Stein said this like he meant it, and I believed he certainly did.
    “No?” I decided to lie again, bald-faced and sideways or any other way that would rattle Moe Stein. “Then how about if I just walk out of here now and let Picasso come after you tonight like he’s already gone after Johnny Halo and your own sweet Celia?”
    Stein paled and said, “Picasso...” And that showed me he not only knew Charlie Furman, but that he knew Furman was also Picasso.
    “You read the newspapers,” I said to him. “Let’s not forget how Picasso went after the guy in the bodega over in Hell’s Kitchen, or the shrink at Bellevue. And here’s a news flash, Moe: I’ve ordered a police guard out for Wendell Prescott—you know, the big real estate developer who wants to bring your kind of casino action to Coney Island?“
    “Ain’t I got the right to police protection, too?”
    “It doesn’t work that way, Moe. First you help me like Prescott did, then I decide if I feel like helping you.
    Otherwise, I let the chips fall any old way. Which in your case, I would hate to imagine.”
    Stein began dribbling. His hands shook and he again dropped his drink, and I again had learned something useful: Moe Stein saw reason for Wendell Prescott to fear the wrath of Picasso.
    “You want me to fix you another one?” I asked.
    He ignored me and he ignored his wet lap. He managed to say, “What’s the story you want to hear?”
    I held up the snapshot and said, “Way back in 1954, here we see the three musketeers. And now today I see before me one of you going to pieces whenever I mention the names of the other two. I naturally ask myself, What’s wrong with this picture?”
    Stein recovered enough of his composure for a last stand at belligerence. “You sound like a cop who’s got all the answers, Hockaday. So what do you need with me?”
    “Let’s just say I’ve got suspicious questions. That’s not near as interesting as answers.”
    “Maybe you should answer me this: if I tell you a story, do I get police protection like Prescott got?”
    “Depending on the story, I’ll consider it.”
    Now Stein had nothing to lose and everything to gain. “Let me have that drink,” he said. I fixed it for him because he was still too shaky. He drank down half.
    “You hear the phone ringing in here?” he asked.
    “No.”
    “I got telephones in all my rooms—this one, my apartment, and everywhere I go. None of them ring. Back in my prime, I was known to be good for taking ten grand on a number, personal. Now I can’t get a jingle out of all my phones. Guys used to call me up from all over the world for odds, or point spreads. Now, zip.
    “So get a load of me now and ask yourself, Ain’t I paid?” Stein started blubbering again and this time it was because of fear. “Look at me sitting here in this cheap hi ya sailor dump trying to jolly up the clydes with shows I done when I was a good-looking kid with teeth and a flat stomach back in the midwest. Ain’t I paid?”
    “Paid for what?” I asked.
    “You want a story, you have to listen to it the way I tell it,” Stein said.
    “Okay.”
    “I was working the Bob-Lo boat out of Belle Isle in Detroit this one year, right after the war. Sleight of hand stuff, close-ups and like that. This guy likes the way I’m doing the act and says he’d like to book me for a club he’s starting up on the East Side—which, believe me, beats working on a boat every night. So okay, I sign up.
    “Turns out, this club is a casino that does pretty good since the cops and the politicians are kept happy. The owner, he gets a big kick out of my act and me; I get a big kick of the gambling action. One thing leads to another and I’ve got this second career since I take to the croupier’s stick like a baby takes to a rattle. Also I work the craps tables, the card games and my personal favorite, the board of horserace results.
    “Pretty soon I’m the big-shot manager and I’m bringing in all kinds of new business and so I got to hire more help. So I got this kid brother who’s home from the war and he can’t hold down a job because of the ringing in his ears, and the Veterans Hospital can’t seem to do nothing about it and meanwhile he’s got a wife to feed...”
    Stein could see I was making