Dark Maze

garters, and seams running up the backs.
    On the bar there was an ashtray with Chesterfield butts in it, next to Celia’s patent-leather pocketbook. And also her saucer and cup, which was maybe a quarter-way full of milk streaked with Scotch. A forensic cop was dusting things with fingerprint powder for whatever good it could do.
    The twelve-year-olds had been herded back into the dining room. From the way some of them were sprawled in the banquettes, they had either fainted or thought murder was the floor show. The others were squawking as to how this would ruin all their plans for the evening. Nevertheless,
    nobody was leaving for the time being and that included even the ones with their wristwatch alarms going off.
    Over near the phone booth in front was a bulky redheaded detective of my slight acquaintance—Logue, from Central Homicide. I could not think of his first name, nor he mine as it turned out. He wore a square, brown suit and a brown tie and he held a pad of yellow paper in his puffy hand. He was asking Angelo questions—until he noticed me and waved me over.
    Logue came straight to it: “The proprietor, here, he tells me some of the things I need to know. Also he says, you, Hockaday, were one of the last persons besides the killer who talked to the deceased... ”
    I looked at Angelo. He was all right, except for his damp forehead and the fact that his skin had gone the color of Elmer’s glue.
    “He tells me you’re on furlough, Detective Hockaday. But since you’re living right in the neighborhood, I asked him to give you a call over. As a professional consideration. So, you want to tell me anything?”
    “Yeah, I want to. But I can’t. I knew the lady only a couple of minutes, long enough to see how there was a long story to her. But I never heard it.”
    Logue sucked his teeth. I asked him, “What can you tell me?”
    He put the yellow pad back in his pocket and shook his fleshy head sideways. We shook hands since we had not done that yet. And then he disagreed with me some.
    “Oh, I don’t think there’s so much to say about her, or about the way she checked out,” Logue said. “Except you don’t have to be no Einstein to see it was personal.”
    “You think so?”
    “Sure I do. For one thing, where’s the signs of any struggles?”
    There were none. It appeared that Celia had simply slid off her barstool after getting herself quietly shot in a five o’clock crowd. Any cop would reasonably surmise that the shooter had been well acquainted with the victim, since any good cop will read a dead face the same as he would a live one. Also, any cop would assume the shooter was a professional; the job was done up-close and personal, neatly executed with a small-bore pistol so as not to make too much noise. Then the shooter had simply walked away in the crowd and commotion of happy hour, leaving Celia to fall down like an axed tree.
    I asked Angelo, “What was she doing here all through the afternoon? And who came to join her recently?”
    Angelo thought for a few seconds, wanting to be careful and correct. He finally answered, slowly, “Celia and I talked about the old days. When she was a player—a gambler. Years ago she used to come here sometimes when we had some penny-ante stuff in the back room. Dice, mostly. Dice was her favorite.
    “Small chat like that, Hock. She had lunch at the bar, the fish-and-chips special. I gave her a lot of change for phone calls..
    “Calls from the booth in here?” I asked.
    “Yeah. She was on the phone a whole lot when she wasn’t sitting at the bar, right where you met her earlier. I honestly don’t remember anybody coming in here asking to see her. And I don’t remember noticing that she talked to anybody, except on the phone.
    “Hock, if I could help, I would.”
    I turned to Logue and asked him, “You already got that about the phone calls?
    Logue said he had, that he was on top of it; he had already put in the police request for the New York Telephone Company to conduct a computer search of its coin-op logs for all outgoing calls from the booth at the Ebb Tide, between the hours of noon and half-past five. Logue added with a shrug, “For what it’s worth.”
    I asked what he meant by that crack.
    “You know, Hock. This job’s just a nine-to-five, no
    overtime.”
    I wanted to say “Maybe to you, Logue.” But I said
    nothing.
    Logue said wearily, “From what I seen and have been told so far, all we got here is the well-done