I had a lunch of beans and rice and hot sausage. I got to Saint Michael's by midafternoon. It was open this time, and I sat for a while in a pew off to the side, then lit a couple of candles. My $150 finally made it to the poor box.
I did what you do. Mostly, I walked around and knocked on doors and asked questions. I went back to both their residences, Herrera's and Cruz's. I talked to neighbors of Cruz's who hadn't been around the previous day, and I talked to some of the other tenants in Herrera's rooming house. I walked over to the Six-eight looking for Cal Neumann. He wasn't there, but I talked to a couple of cops in the station house and went out for coffee with one of them.
I made a couple of phone calls, but most of my activity was walking around and talking to people face-to-face, writing down bits and pieces in my notebook, going through the motions and trying not to question the point of my actions. I was amassing a certain amount of data but I had no idea whether or not it added up to anything. I didn't know what exactly I was looking for, or if there was anything there to look for. I suppose I was trying to perform enough action and produce enough information to justify, to myself and to Tommy and his lawyer, the fee I had already collected and largely dispersed.
By early evening I'd had enough. I took the train home. There was a message at the desk for me from Tommy Tillary, with his office number. I put it in my pocket and walked around the corner, and Billie Keegan told me Skip was looking for me.
"Everybody's looking for me," I said.
"It's nice to be wanted," Billie said. "I had an uncle was wanted in four states. You had a phone message, too. Where'd I put it?" He handed me a slip. Tommy Tillary again, but a different phone number this time. "Something to drink, Matt? Or did you just drop by to check your mail and messages?"
I'd been taking it easy in Brooklyn, mostly sticking with cups of coffee in bakeries and bodegas, drinking a little beer in the bars. I let Billie pour me a double bourbon and it went down easy.
"Looked for you today," Billie said. "Couple of us went out to the track. Thought you might want to come along."
"I had work to do," I said. "Anyway, I'm not much for horses."
"It's fun," he said, "if you don't take it serious."
THE number Tommy Tillary left turned out to be a hotel switchboard in Murray Hill. He came on the line and asked if I could drop by the hotel. "You know where it is? Thirty-seventh and Lex?"
"I ought to be able to find it."
"They got a bar downstairs, nice quiet little place. It's full of these Jap businessmen in Brooks Brothers suits. Every once in a while they put down their scotches long enough to take snapshots of each other. Then they smile and order more drinks. You'll love it."
I caught a cab and went over there, and he hadn't been exaggerating much. The cocktail lounge, plush and dimly lit, had a largely Japanese clientele that evening. Tommy was by himself at the bar, and when I walked in he pumped my hand and introduced me to the bartender.
We took our drinks to a table. "Crazy place," he said. "Look at that, will you? You thought I was kidding about the cameras, didn't you? I wonder what they do with all the pictures. You'd need a whole room in your house just to keep them, the way they click 'em off."
"There's no film in the cameras."
"Be a kick, wouldn't it?" He laughed. "No film in the cameras. Shit, they're probably not real Japs, either. Where I mostly been going, there's the Blueprint a block away on Park, and there's another place, a pub-type place, Dirty Dick's or something like that. But I'm staying here and I wanted you to be able to reach me. Is this okay for now or should we go somewhere else?"
"This is fine."
"You sure? I never had a detective work for me before, I want to make sure I keep him happy." He grinned, then let his face turn serious. "I was just wondering," he said, "if you were, you know, making any progress. Getting anyplace."
I told him some of what I'd run into. He got very excited when he heard about the barroom stabbing.
"That's great," he said. "That ought to wrap it up for our little brown brothers, shouldn't it?"
"How do you figure that?"
"He's a knife artist," he said, "and he already killed somebody once and got away with it. Jesus, this is great stuff, Matt. I knew it was the right move to get you in on this. Have you talked to Kaplan yet?"
"No."
"That's what you want to do. This is the kind of stuff he can use."
I wondered at that. For openers, it struck me that Drew Kaplan should have been able to inform himself of Miguelito Cruz's no-bill for homicide without hiring a detective. Nor did it seem to me that the information would weigh heavily in a courtroom, or that you could even introduce it in court, for that matter. Anyway, Kaplan had said he was looking for something that would keep him and his client out of court in the first place, and I couldn't see how I'd uncovered anything that qualified.
"You want to fill Drew in on everything you come up with," Tommy assured me. "Some little bit you hand him, might not look like anything to you, and it might fit with something he already has and it's just what he needs, you know what I mean? Even if it looks like nothing all by itself."
"I can see how that would work."
"Sure. Call him once a day, give him whatever you got. I know you don't file reports, but you don't mind checking in regular by phone, do you?"
"No, of course not."
"Great," he said. "That's great, Matt. Let me get us a couple more of these." He went to the bar, came back with fresh drinks. "So you been out in my part of the world, huh? Like it out there?"
"I like your neighborhood better than Cruz and Herrera's."