Dark Maze

advertising the Steeplechase; then years later you would see in the movies that he’d changed that pansy name of his to Cary Grant. Okay?
    “Also I seen Abie Relis when he got tossed out a window of the Half-Moon Hotel by the goons from Murder Incorporated when he was supposed to be stashed out here in Coney for police protection. Hah! That was hilarious.”
    Halo glared at me.
    “I seen the neighborhood change a lot,” he said. “And I changed lots. But the ocean, it ain’t changed. Out there, it’s still blue.”
    A couple of reflective seconds passed and then I asked# “So you know just about everybody who ever came througl Coney?”
    Halo did not care much for this turn of the conversation, let alone the fact that I had entered it. He answered warily
    “I guess so, just about. You’re a cop, ain’t that right?”
    Picasso’s voice again. “Cop, ain't you?”
    I took the gold shield from my pocket and put it on the bar. “Detective Hockaday. You can call me Hock.”
    “She a cop, too?” Halo asked, a hammy thumb directed at Ruby.
    “No, she isn’t,” Ruby said. “I’m just along to learn about the street.”
    Then Big Stuff got excited. He rose from his stumpy legs, which he had folded up beneath him on the barstool, and said to Halo, “Johnny, him and the woman, they as’t about Fire and Brimstone.”
    “Shut up!” Halo snarled.
    “Do you know a man named Charlie Furman who sometimes calls himself Picasso?” I asked him.
    “Never heard of him.”
    Big Stuff also shook his head. A bodyguard of lies was spread all over their faces.
    I asked Halo, “How about Celia Furman?”
    “Likewise,” Halo said.
    “Nope,” Big Stuff said.
    I decided the conversation needed stimulation. “Celia Furman was murdered two days ago, in the city. Before she got it, she made a lot of telephone calls—to that phone over there by the gents’.”
    Halo’s eyes flickered disagreeably. He said, “Too bad about the lady.”
    “According to telephone company logs,” I said, “she pretty much tied up your telephone over there for the afternoon. I think you’d notice that.”
    “What day was it again?” Halo said.
    “Two days ago. In the afternoon.”
    “Oh, yeah, I remember now. That’s the day we got real, real busy in here.”
    I looked down the bar. Everybody stared at drinks. This was none of their business. “So busy you never noticed all the phone calls?”
    “Afraid not.”
    This could have gone on for hours. Which only tells you how badly I handled it. I would have to come back once I figured out why Johnny Halo was lying, and once I remembered rule number one of being a detective: know most of the answers to most of your questions before you ask.
    We finished our drinks and left, then walked back to where we had started, the taffy stand just outside the subway station. Ruby said, “So the day shouldn’t be a complete waste, Hock, why don’t you spring for some cotton candy? I haven’t had cotton candy since I was a kid in plaits and mama-jama dresses.”
    I gave a couple of dollars to the curly-headed young woman running the stand, and she obliged with a fat wad of feathery pink cotton candy. I said she should keep the change and she said, “God bless.”
    Then Ruby and I rode the F train back to Manhattan.
    I suggested lunch at Angelo’s Ebb Tide, which Ruby thought was a good idea since she could then study another of Picasso’s paintings. And then after a good long lunch, we made plans for a night downtown at Ruby’s place. But first we would stop by my apartment because Ruby had some telephone calls to make and I wanted to collect my toothbrush and read my mail.

    Good plans are sometimes unkept, even by the most well intentioned. In our case, this was because of the mail.
    Specifically because of a plain white business-size envelope addressed to me, with a city postmark. It was the cheap kind of envelope that comes a hundred to the box at any Lamston’s store. There was a flag stamp on the envelope, upside down.
    And inside, a Polaroid photograph.
    It was the picture of a painting hung on a bare wall. The artist had rendered the figure of a man with a frizz of black hair. The man lay on his belly on a rooftop garden, with a knife plunged into his back.

EIGHT

    I telephoned Logue, who of course had called it a day. Then I rang Neglio, who of course had done the same. And then I made the mistake of dialing Bellevue.
    “Admissions, may I help you?”
    “I want to speak to