Dark Maze

frosted with the images of leering white French poodles dressed in cutaway coats and top hats.
    I put the matches in my shirt pocket.
    “Well now, see how we’re getting somewhere?” Chastity said. There was a lot in her voice that told me the city’s money had been well invested. “Let’s seek some more, shall we?”
    There was nothing interesting about the mail, or the newspapers. So I picked through Halo’s odds and ends while Chastity watched, bemused. I pored through old lottery tickets, OTB slips, laundry receipts, dimes and nickels and blackened pennies, empty twisted cigarette packs, loose sticks of brittled chewing gum. And then something interesting: a miniature bible with a pebbled black leatherette cover and red-tipped pages, about one-by-two inches.
    “Well here’s a real surprise,” I said, picking up the bible. “Would you have figured Johnny Halo to be a religious man?”
    Chastity had no comment. But she smiled when I opened the bible and found tiny letters stamped on the inside cover. My eyes strained as I read:

    Crown of Thorns Holy Tabernacle
    —A Refuge from Sin in Times Square—
    —Friendly & Clean—

    384 W. 41st St.
    New York City

    Nightly Vespers
    Sunday Services 10 a.m.

    “He’s not only a religious man; he’s a real thumper, I see.” I leafed through the miniature pages, something that Halo had never done from the feel of the stiff paper. I asked Chastity, “And what do you know about this?”
    “Only what they say.”
    “What do they say?”
    “Oh, that old one about still waters running deep, that’s all.” And there was that tight smile of hers again, the one that said: this avenue of inquiry is temporarily closed.
    “Have it your way,” I said.
    Chastity gazed around the sparse parlor with the cheesy furniture, then out the window, and then toward the archways leading off to the other rooms. She said, “You know,
    Johnny’s finally got himself a halfway decent setup and here he don’t have a clue about making it look nice like a regular home. I should be sitting so pretty like this; I’d know what to do with the place.”
    I allowed Chastity a few seconds of her House Beautiful dreams, then I brought her back around to business. “Maybe we could please pick up on my earlier questions?” I asked.
    “Sure, let’s do. I couldn’t live with myself if I thought your tips were going for nothing, Hockaday.”
    “Where’s Halo, and why is he missing?”
    “I honestly don’t know. And I honestly don’t give a rat’s fanny.”
    “You don’t like the guy?”
    “It shows?”
    “So what’s he done to you, Chastity?”
    “I don’t remember you asking that earlier.”
    “You only had a hundred forty bucks earlier,” I said, reaching for my wallet.
    “Save it,” Chastity said. “Like I told you, I got a heart. Which means I realize the city’s not what you’d call flush right now. Besides which, you’d find out somewhere else anyways.”
    “Find out what?”
    “That everybody around here pretty much equally despises Johnny Halo for the simple fact that everybody’s usually into him for at least a yard. It’s not hard to hate a guy’s guts when you’re owing him money all the time.“
    “What kind of a scam does he run?”
    “The straight six-for-five rip. Anything higher, he knows he’d never live to spend his profits.”
    “You borrow five bucks, you pay back six at the end of the week?”
    “That’s it. One hundred bucks is the minimum hook. So at six-for-five, that counts up to twenty percent worth of vigorish on the unpaid balance—a week.”
    “Very sweet,” I said.
    I decided to let this particular detail of Johnny Halo’s précis alone for a while.
    “Just one more question,” I said. “Where did you get the hat?”
    “There’s a private dive around here by the name of the Carny Club,” Chastity said. “Ever hear of it?”
    I said I had.
    “Last night I dropped by late. When I was finally going home, there was this nice green-feathered hat hanging on a peg in the foyer, just waiting to get pinched.”
    “So you pinched.”
    There was that tight smile again.

    Down in the alley, Patrolman Gotha was tapping in time to “Sophisticated Lady.” He waved when he saw me come out the hotel door.
    “Find out what you’re after?” he asked.
    “Some, not all,” I said. “Do you have a crowbar in the trunk of this car?”
    “Sure.”
    “Good.” I crossed in front of the car and then got in on the passenger side.