Dark Maze

all five boroughs of New York City. Early April is a relatively nonviolent time of the year in New York, but the city’s killing pace grows brisker as income-tax deadlines near and then we get up to a fine breakneck speed by August’s dog days. Right then, though, sullen detectives in bad suits and unflattering light were mostly idled. They typed up hated case-load status reports or otherwise chuffed through hated indoor tasks, or else they ate doughnuts and drank coffee.
    I myself had engaged in the latter activity for the past thirty-five minutes, practically ever since arriving from Bellevue. I had dutifully made my initial calls from the hospital. Then, when the rooftop party was in full attendance and I could gracefully slip away, I decided to have one °f the uniforms run me downtown so I could have some official peace and quiet in order to put in two additional c alls: one to Logue, out of respect and also to ask him where tas file on Picasso might be, and one to Inspector Neglio.
    Neglio was the more difficult call.
    Naturally, I rang Logue first. I reached him easily enough at his home in the Bronx. Much to my surprise, he said, “I’m glad you called me, Hock. I’ll be right down there. Have the captain let you into my office, take a load off.”
    The night clerk in Neglio’s office read me the inspector’s evening itinerary and if I did not know better, I might hav e thought the guy was running for public office. Neglio was scheduled for a Knights of Columbus spaghetti banquet at half-past six out in Bay Ridge, then a mid-evening drop-by back in Manhattan at some Park Avenue soiree to benefit the poor and downtrodden, then he had to make some after-dinner remarks at a session of the New York Press Club. I finally reached him up at Grade Mansion, where the mayor and his wife were tossing a party for the U.N. crowd.
    “What is it, Hock?” he barked when a butler on the city payroll handed him the telephone. I was fairly sure I heard a woman nuzzling his neck and ear. “And it better be damn good!”
    “Have you heard any news broadcasts tonight?” Neglio sighed. “By that, you mean have I heard about the homicide at Bellevue?”
    “That news, yes.”
    “I knew I shouldn’t have answered the phone!” Neglio sighed again, and then some baby-doll voice in the background on his end said, “Oh, you’re no fun!” Then Neglio covered the telephone speaker with his hand and said to the baby doll, “Christ, I’m on the horn!”
    “Inspector?”
    “Okay, so I heard about that,” he said to me. “In fact they were asking my reaction at the press club and I said I deplored the senseless violence.”
    Baby doll muttered “Oh, pooh!” and Neglio sighed again and said, “All right, what is this, your latest nut job in action again, what’s his name?”
    “Picasso.”
    “Yeah, that one. We got an APB out on him, right? What’s going now, a serial number?”
    “No question about it. And you know how jumpy head' quarters gets about serial murder.”
    “Not to mention that the second hit takes down a doctor* right in Bellevue Hospital.“
    “Sorry to upset your evening, Inspector.”
    “Well, not as sorry as the doctor, I guess. Dr. what’s-his-name.”
    “Reiser.”
    “Yeah, that doctor. Look, Hock, you got any kind of a line on this Picasso character?”
    “There’s not much to go on. I’ve got Logue on his way down here from the Bronx, and we’re going to look over the record, such as it is. I do know one thing... ”
    “Which is what?”
    “I’m going to need you to smooth the way for me on this one. You’re good with the types likely to be getting in my way.”
    “Like the press, right? Yeah, I can see that coming.“
    “Also I can see City Hall wanting to get all over my case, along with the usual flock of free-lance justice seekers.”
    “I knew I shouldn’t have answered the phone.”
    So Neglio hung up.
    And that was when I started in on the doughnuts and coffee. The third coffee sent me to the men’s room, which is where I bumped into Davy Mogaill.
    I was standing at one of those big old-fashioned marble urinals enjoying my relief and a couple of graffiti just above eye-level: be right back—godot and dyslexics of the world, untie! Then in walked Davy Mogaill, whom I know from the very old days up in the Twenty-sixth Precinct in Morningside Heights. Mogaill was already a detective when I was a rookie, then he rose to a captaincy at Central Homicide.
    Mogaill