Dark Maze

would soon shut it forever. I said, “Don’t move.”
    One of the uniforms put in a call for paramedics on his point-to-point hip radio.
    Big Stuff hissed at me, “Lean down here.”
    I put my face down near his and said, “Go ahead, tell me.
    His words came in sprays of blood. “We had reasons for what we done. Coney Island reasons, you understand?”
    I lied to the dying man. “I understand.”
    Big Stuff smiled a bloody smile. “It’s all we have anymore. We’re trying to hang on. See? Coney Island reasons.” He was slipping fast.
    Quickly, I lied again. “I should go tell her it’s all over now.”
    He said, “Yes... over... ”
    “Where is she, Big Stuff?”
    He said, “Want a laugh? I loved her. I’d do anything for that crazy woman.”
    “Where is she, Big Stuff? Tell me.”
    The dwarf’s last words were, “With him, in the old slaughterhouse. Where else?”

TWENTY-FIVE

    I had a squad car run me over to my apartment.
    Ruby was there, reading a book.
    I kissed her, then I telephoned Neglio at his home. I was happy to get his answering machine. I said, “I’m going in after Picasso.”
    Then I changed out of my suit into jeans, boots, a sweatshirt and a jacket. I strapped on a second shoulder holster for my .44 and I filled my pockets with three sets of bracelets and extra bullets for both the .38 and the .44.
    Ruby stared at me.
    “It looks worse than it is,” I said.
    “That’s a damn lie,” she said.
    “When I come back, we’ll talk about taking a trip, all right?”
    “I’ll be waiting.”
    Did she know how good those words sounded? Does anybody besides a cop know?
    I picked up a flashlight from out of a drawer in the sideboard and left.

    * * *

    Standing in front of it now, I could only think how I should have known. I should have known from the day Picasso told me about the bodega windows, and the fear he had so proudly captured in the pig’s eye. If not then, I should surely have known after the murder in that bodega.
    Like Ruby said, “Right under your nose—right here in Hell’s Kitchen.”
    Like Big Stuff said, “ Where else?"
    Where else but the old kosher slaughterhouse hugging a desolate stretch of Eleventh Avenue, between Thirty-eighth and Thirty-seventh Streets?
    I had walked all around the place, figuring where Picasso might have made his door and where in the big old hulk he had set up his studio. Probably somewhere on the north side, I told myself; artists like working in north light, the truest light. The door was probably a hole, covered by some salvaged piece.
    I looked up now at the wide gateways that once were filled by wooden chutes and screams of dumb fear, now sealed with cement and cinder block; ten stout floors in all, windows shuttered over in tin; and the big terra-cotta busts of ring-muzzled hogs and lambs and steers set high along the old red-brick walls. And all of it coated gray from the perpetual swirl of exhaust grime from the Lincoln Tunnel traffic.
    There was a steel trash bin set against the limestone base of the rear wall. I pushed past it to find the opening, a small triangular gap punched between two sections of crumbled brick. I bent, flashed light inside, and startled a rat. Then I hunched my shoulders and exhaled, and squeezed my way into the black insides.
    I stood in heavy darkness and waited for my eyes to adjust, and my ears.
    Now came fading echoes. And furtive scratchings from interior walls alive with vermin. I drew out my big piece, the .44 Charter Arms Bulldog in my shoulder holster. This I held in my right hand. With my left, I swept my surroundings with the flashlight beam.
    I had entered a wide corridor beneath an iron staircase. Down the corridor and beyond the stairs was a line of tall hollow spaces, each the size of a large door. A bank of elevators must have been there years ago.
    I directed the flashlight beam up along the staircase rails and disturbed a nest of bats clinging upside-down to an asbestos-covered pipe. The animals dropped through the dank air in frenzied loops. I covered my head and moved forward, and headed up the stairs.
    Near the top of the first flight, a rusted step gave way. My leg sank into a hole and pain filled my knee. From that point on, I tested each riser before putting down my full weight. And I walked along the edges of the steps, close against the wall, the way a good burglar will quietly stalk through an unfamiliar room.
    At the fourth floor, there was the strong odor of cats— male