Dark Maze

me the Johnnie Walker and sat down.
    “You didn’t miss nothing yet,” Big Stuff told her. “Supposing we get down to it, whatever it is?” I said. “I’ve got a long ride back into the city ahead of me.”
    “This afternoon, what you said about Picasso—I liked it,” Big Stuff said.
    “What?”
    “You said you thought it would be too bad if all people said about him was he came, he went and who cares. I told Waldo here, and he told Evie.”
    “Do you know where Picasso is?”
    “We think Picasso is a great artist,” Evie said, “the best painter on the boardwalk. He’s had a lot of trouble the past year, and now the cops and the newspapers are after him.“
    “And we’re not saying he’s your chamber of commerce type of guy,” Waldo said, taking over from Evie. “But we’re saying he’s got rights, like even the big shots. Which includes the fact that since nobody’s got any proof he’s guilty he’s still an innocent man.”
    Big Stuff asked me, “You think he done those murders?” What I thought was, these three were coming at me sideways for reasons of their own that I would probably not determine tonight. I figured the best way of getting anything at all useful to me was to move sideways myself.
    So I ignored Big Stuff like he had ignored me when I asked him if he knew where Picasso was. I asked Waldo, “How do you do that swallowing number with the mouse?”
    “I pull out the claws and the teeth and then I soak him in a little butter and olive oil and he goes down easier than anything,” Waldo said. “Also he comes up real easy since he’s so anxious to get air he’s helping me and I don’t have to use half the muscles I got to use with coins or like that.” Big Stuff said, “You didn’t answer me, Hockaday.”
    “You didn’t answer me,” I said.
    “We don’t know where Picasso is,” Evie said. “None of us has seen him since he left Coney. You heard about how they put him out over at the Seashore?”
    “I did.”
    “Well, that was better than a year ago,” Evie said, “and then Picasso disappeared off the face of the earth. All we know is there’s all this stuff about him in the newspapers and on the TV and radio, with the murders and all...” Waldo broke in. “And then Big Stuff tells us that you were saying to him this afternoon how you recently talked to him.”
    “Is he all right?” Evie asked.
    It suddenly came to me where I had seen her before. “You run that candy stand at the subway station, right?” I asked her.
    “Yeah. Philips Salt Water Taffee and Ka-Ra-Me-La,” she said. “I remember you from a few days ago. You and the black lady. She’s pretty. She ain’t a cop, is she?”
    “No.”
    “What is she, an actress?”
    “Yes.”
    “I thought so. Didn’t I tell you, Waldo?”
    Big Stuff cut in. “What’d you talk about with Picasso?” he asked me.
    Figuring they might possibly be shocked into revealing something about their motives in inviting me to have a free drink at the Carny Club, I said, “Oh, he was telling me how he wanted to kill somebody.”
    “How come you didn’t just put him in the trap right when he told you that?” Big Stuff asked.
    Evie answered for me. “Because, you little stupe, if the cops went and jailed everybody who says they’re in the mood to murder, they’d never have any room in the jug for the serious criminals. Like for instance the ones trying to make Coney into some kind of a new Las Vegas.”
    “Real funny,” Big Stuff said. He did not laugh.
    I asked Evie, “I take it the membership here is slightly divided on the question of casino gambling on the boardwalk?”
    “How come you think we got the house policy of locking up the guns?” she asked.
    Waldo said, “Look, it’s obvious you don’t trust us carnies. Okay. You don’t have to tell us what you and Picasso talked about exactly. We only want to know if he’s okay, that’s all. And we just wanted to take a look at you and see if you’re an all-right guy—which I think you probably are.”
    Big Stuff said, “The membership’s divided on that one, too.”
    Evie asked again, “Is he okay?”
    I said nothing.
    Waldo said, “Detective Hockaday, we just want you to know that ao matter what you or anybody else thinks of us carnies, we’re like anybody else would be when they got trouble in the family. Which is what we are here, family. We all got individual differences, and we take care of different business. But we also take care