Dark Maze

of each other, you see that?”
    “Let’s say Picasso done them murders,” Big Stuff said. “Sooner or later, you’re going to catch him someplace, which ain’t going to be far since he ain’t got the wherewithal to travel nowhere, and even the Foreign Legion don’t take old guys with bad eyes.
    “The thing is, though, we’d like it if you didn’t go shooting him down like a dog. If you give him a little dignity when you find him, on account of his art. Well, that’s all we’re asking.”
    Waldo said, “All of us have been pushed around here, and Picasso got pushed right up to the edge. Look around this room, look around the boardwalk, and Coney’s side streets. We’re all looking right into the gutter. When we fall, the smell of that gutter’s going to come as no big surprise. We’re doing the best we can, which includes throwing each other on the mercy of cops that seem like they might be all right.“
    “See, we love him,” Evie added.
    “There isn’t a man or woman here who’s missed out on a bad run-in with Picasso,” Waldo said. “But there’s nobody here in Coney who hasn’t got great respect for him as a carny and as a great artist.”
    “You love him, too, Waldo?” I asked.
    “Yeah, I do.”
    “All day out here, people have been telling me in different ways they love and admire Picasso,” I said. “I was at the Neptune, and Johnny Halo goes on and on about him, actually quoting the guy.”
    Evie narrowed her cupcake eyes and asked, “Johnny Halo told you he loves Picasso like we do?”
    “In a manner of speaking, yes.”
    I had drunk half my Scotch. Now I put back the rest of it and looked at my wristwatch.
    “Johnny Halo has warm eyes and a cold mouth,” Evie said. “You follow?”
    “You mean you don’t trust him?”
    “No, I don’t.”
    “I’ll tell you who else never trusted Johnny Halo,” Waldo said. “And that’s Picasso himself. Him and Johnny, they were enemies.”
    “Since when?”
    “Well, after Picasso was kicked out of the Seashore, he was staying down under the boardwalk like folks do when they’re between places or hiding out,” Waldo said. “Two or three days after Picasso’s down there hiding, Johnny Halo’s suddenly got money, all kinds of money. So much money he buys out the Seashore Hotel from the landlord.
    “Which is very strange since Halo’s been living there himself paying rent on a room, way longer than Picasso lived there. Sometimes Halo’s had his troubles paying on the first of the month, too, even though he always had that ratty bar of his.”
    “Where does Halo live now?” I asked.
    Waldo said, “Oh, he’s still at the Seashore. He took over three rooms on the top floor and connected them up. He’s real proud of his place. He calls it the presidential suite.“
    “Don’t tell him no more about nothing,” Big Stuff said to Waldo. “I can’t stand listening to you; you sound like a gossipy old magpie.”
    “I don’t have time to listen anyway,” I said, standing up. I took three twenties out from my wallet and dropped them on the coffee table. “That’s so you can all have a drink for yourselves, all right?”
    I headed for the foyer, and Evie followed me. Sealo was on his way in. Estelline the sword swallower was pushing him in his wheelchair.
    “My guns,” I told Evie.
    She unlocked the cabinet and gave me the .38 and the Beretta .22. She looked in back of her, then at me and she said, “When you see Picasso, tell him God bless.”
    Then I walked back along West Fifth to Surf Avenue. But before I got on the subway, I cut over to the boardwalk and dropped in at the Neptune for a word with Halo.
    But Halo was not there.
    The bartender on duty was named Mike. I identified myself and asked where Johnny Halo was.
    “He decided to take the night off,” Mike said. “So he called me up to fill in.”
    “Did he say why he wasn’t working tonight?”
    “Well, he just said he had a little business over in Manhattan.”

SEVENTEEN

    I was making good progress with my notebook until the woman with the rhinestone sunglasses and the cotton wads in her ears boarded my Manhattan-bound F train at Brooklyn’s York Street station.
    There were lots of seats available since the car was less than half-filled. But she stood at the door looking everything over carefully, then chose to camp next to me.
    She was maybe ten or twelve years older than me, which I realized was an age when people begin looking a little battered