Dark Maze

“Drive us up to the boardwalk. We’re going to open up the Neptune bar.”
    “I can’t leave my post.”
    “I’m the guy in charge of your post.”
    “That’s true.” Gotha started the car, put it into gear and we turned west onto Surf Avenue, then south on a sand and blacktop drive that led to the boardwalk. “The warrant covers the Neptune, too?”
    “Yes.”
    “How come the place needs a forced entry?”
    “Because the owner’s been missing since last night. That would be Johnny Halo. His place never opened up this morning.“
    “Wait. I thought we were looking for this Picasso guy who used to live at the Seashore.”
    “We’re looking for both of them now,” I said. “Pass the word along when we’re all done here, okay?”
    “Sure I will.”
    Gotha parked the car and took the crowbar out from the trunk and we headed up the boardwalk for the Neptune.
    As I figured, the janitor had given up and left. And locked
    the door again.
    Gotha put the crowbar to it and snapped it open. We walked in and turned on the lights and heard the sound of scurrying mouse feet.
    I looked around for something in the way of an office and records. The nearest I came was a storeroom full of empty deposit bottles and a broom closet.
    I checked behind the bar. Nothing.
    My work here was through, at least for now.

    I ought to give titles out of the holy goddamn bible for some of these paintings. How about that? Ain’t that just the thing for my reputation?
    Damn straight.
    Haw! Maybe I should apply for one of them grants! Hoo-boy, that’d be something, hey?
    Let’s see. How about, “Ye lust and have not, ye kill and desire to have and cannot obtain”? Yeah, some of that New Testament crapola!
    Or how about, “If a man know not how to rule his own house, how will he take care of the church of God?”
    Now you're talking!
    Damn straight.

TWENTY

    I was surprised it was only four o’clock. Time always seems so much longer in Coney Island than it does back in Manhattan; the tides and the rolling ocean sounds of Coney are never in a hurry.
    There was no point now in my dropping by the Carny Club to nose around. Nobody would be there until at least seven. Besides, it might prove well to let a day lapse; nobody in that crowd was in a hurry to help me find Picasso, or Johnny Halo for that matter. I could make far better use of this afternoon working some other angle of the case. And dreaming up some sideways approach to all the questions popping in my mind about Celia Furman’s traveling green hat.
    I left Patrolman Gotha and walked aimlessly through Astroland until I came on the Fire and Brimstone. And just as those few days ago when Ruby and I stood here together in shock before Picasso’s ruthless masterpiece, I again remembered my many years’ indifference to the bloody cruel knowledge in Charlie Furman’s vision of the world.
    A glimpse of someone else's nightmare, and then a round of brave laughs. What reason had we to wonder about an artist’s mind?
    I turned away and walked back through the lane to Bowery Street and up to Nathan’s Famous. For the next fifteen minutes I stood at the open-air counter on the Surf Avenue side, nursing a short beer. I bought another beer when the organ at the B&B Carousell just across the way started up with “By the Sea,” turning I watched the wooden horses lift and fall and also the small dark man who ran the organ pumps and the carousel motor.
    He clanked a bell and waved in my direction. Even in the deep shade where he stood, I saw his smile. I waved back.
    A red-and-yellow taxicab pulled up in front of the B&B and stopped at the curb, blocking my view. The driver got out and helped his passengers with the back door, a rare sight in New York nowadays. Sparkle the snake charmer stepped from the taxi, her long black hair rising in puffs with the street breeze. She and the taxi driver leaned together into the cab and brought out a wheelchair, then Sealo.
    Sparkle paid the driver and then wheeled Sealo across the avenue. I watched as the two of them cut through the gaudy aisles of Astroland—just a pair of nature’s oddities, reporting for duty on the boardwalk at Coney Island.
    I paid for my beer and crossed the avenue to the subway station.

    It occurred to me that I should probably drop by Central Homicide on the chance that Logue had returned from the field with something useful, something that would help compute. If not, there was always the entertaining possibility