Dark Maze

posted him right outside the joint and had him palming to the after-five bunch. That way we could watch him, see.”
    “And?”
    “He was kind of lazy, I’d say. But he didn’t go and toss the cards in the garbage like a lot of these guys do, so you could see the guy was at least honest. But also you could see the guy was definitely a head case by the way he was all the time jabbering with some imaginary friend, like a goofball little kid does.”
    “I saw him do that, too!” I said, giving Benny the wide eyes.
    “Yah, well then you know how it ain’t doing us no good when we pay a guy to palm, and he’s out there acting so schitzy all he does is scare away half the potential customers.”
    “So you canned him?”
    “Hey! If I’d of had it all my way, the little psycho and his French beanie would’ve been heaved out into the ambulance lane of Seventh Avenue at rush hour. But, oh no! My genius partner, he feels sorry for the old coot. Like he feels sorry for old Delilah and for that goddamn harpy. Honest to god, sometimes I don’t know whether I’m running a bar here or some kind of freaking house of charity.”
    “I take it things got worse with Picasso?”
    “Get this,” Benny said. “One day we get these new palm cards printed up. It’s my idea. I want to see if we can scare up some more daytime business from the suits, you know? Guess what the new cards say?”
    “Just tell me, Benny.”
    “Oh yeah, you don’t guess. The cards, they say ‘Sex for Lunch.’”
    I laughed. “Not bad.”
    “Yeah, well, I thought it was a pretty cute idea,” Benny said. “Moe thought it was a ripper, too. Anybody in his right mind’d think it’s funny. Guess who don’t think it’s funny?“
    “No guess there.”
    “Right. So, next thing we know after we give Picasso the new cards is there’s so much goddamn noise outside the door you’d of thought it was World War III. Moe and me, we go rushing out and there’s Picasso, screaming at everybody. He’s throwing all my new palm cards at people in the street and screaming, ‘Filth! Philistine filth!’ over and over. And he’s kicking and punching people, too, and some of them’s falling down on their keisters. He takes one look at Moe and me and he starts screaming ‘Whoremonger!’ over and over, then he pops us both pretty good. He knocks my upper plate out of my mouth and mashes my nose and clouts Moe so ad he can’t hear right for a whole week. And then the cops come running up and they drag him off to I-don’t-know-where, Bellevue, I guess.”
    Benny caught his breath and poured himself another drink. I sipped at my second beer.
    “The guy’s little,” Benny said, “but he’s piss-willy mean and a lot stronger than he looks. It took a half-dozen big cops to take him down that day.”
    “When was that?”
    Benny scratched his chin. “Just shy of a year ago.” ? “Did he ever come back?”
    Benny rapped the bar again. “Nope. I told the cop in charge we don’t want no trouble on account of him. I told him how we paid him off the books and all, and how I didn’t want him around except my bleeding-heart partner did and look where it got us. I gave the cop a twenty for his troubles, and he said, Well maybe we can just forget all about it. So that was that.”
    But Benny added, “You know, though, afterwards he started creeping my dreams, you know? I’d see him sitting at the bar, eating the food we’d give him as a favor because of Moe and his goddamn charitable weakness. I’d see them eyes of his, crazy big eyes following me while he sat there munching. You ever take a good look at that bird, I mean close up?”
    “Now that you mention it,” I said, “he does look a little hinky.”
    “A little! Adolf Hitler was a little hinky, too.”
    “I see what you mean.”
    I wanted to get out of there fast to call in a Brooklyn squad to roust Picasso from the Seashore Hotel in the unlikely event he was there; I wanted to tell Benny I was a cop. I wanted to have him take precautions in light of what happened to Celia Furman and Dr. Ronald Reiser and now Benito. But some instinct told me to keep quiet, at least for a while; a halfway competent cop, which is what I enjoy thinking I am, learns to trust his instincts.
    “But tell me this,” I said, “what’s going to happen if Picasso ever turns up here again?”
    Benny smiled. No good could come of such a smile.
    He leaned down under the bar. When he stood up again he held a .44