Cindy poked her head out. “I . . . don’t . . . know nothin’.”
“The fuck you don’t. Let’s try this: somebody broke into Duke’s place, you give me a suspect.”
“I . . don’t . . . know.”
“Last chance. You held back at the station, Feather came clean. You went to Kathy Janeway’s motel and stuffed her with a ten-spot. What else you hold back on?”
“Look–”
“Give.”
“Give on what?”
“Give on Duke’s new gig and his enemies. Tell me who used to pimp Kathy.”
“I don’t know who pimped her!”
“Then give on the other two.”
Cindy wiped her face–smeared lipstick, runny makeup. “All I know’s this guy was going around talking up cocktail-bar girls, acting like Duke. You know, the same one-liners, real Dukey shtick. I heard he was trying to get girls to do call jobs for him. He didn’t talk to me or Feather, this is just stale-bread stuff I heard, like from two weeks ago.”
Click: “This Guy” maybe the pad tosser, “This Guy” trying on Cathcart’s clothes. “Keep going on that.”
“That is all I heard, just the way I heard it.”
“What did the guy look like?”
“I don’t know.”
“Who told you about him?”
“I don’t even know that, they were just girls gabbing at the next table at this goddamned bar.”
“All right, easy. Duke’s new gig. Give on that.”
“Mister, it was just another Dukey pipe dream.”
“Then why didn’t you tell me before?”
“You know the old adage ‘Don’t speak ill of the dead’?” “Yeah. You know the bull daggers at the Woman’s Jail?” Cindy sighed. “Dukey pipe dream number six thousand– smut peddler. Is that a yuck? Dukey said he was going to push this weird smut. That’s all I know, we had a two-second conversation on the topic and that’s all Duke said. I didn’t press it ’cause I know a pipe dream when I hear one. Now will you get out of here?”
Loose Bureau talk: Ad Vice working pornography. “What kind of smut?”
“Mister, I told you I don’t know, it was just a two-second conversation.”
“You gonna pay Kathy back what Duke left you?” “Sure, Good Samaritan. Ten here, ten there. If I gave her the money all at once she’d just blow it on movie mags anyway.”
“I might be back.”
“I wait with bated breath.”
o o o
Bud drove to a mailbox, sent the cash out special delivery: Kathy Janeway, Orchid View Motel, plenty of stamps and a friendly note. Four hundred plus–a small fortune for a kid.
7:00–time to kill before he met Dudley. The Bureau for a time-killer: Ad Vice, the squadroom board.
Squad 4 on the smut job–Kifka, Henderson, Vincennes, Stathis–four men tracking stag books, all reporting no leads. Nobody around, he could check by in the morning, it was probably nothing anyway. He walked over to Homicide, called Abe’s Noshery.
Stens answered.
“Abe’s.”
“Dick, it’s me.”
“Oh? Checking up on me, _Officer?_”
“Dick, come on.”
“No, I mean it. You’re a Dudley man now. Maybe Dud don’t like the people I push my corned beef to. Maybe Dud wants skinny, thinks I’ll talk to you. It ain’t like you’re your own man no more.”
“You been drinking, partner?”
“I drink kosher now. Tell Exicy that. Tell him Danny Duck wants to dance with him. Tell him I read about his old man and Dream-a-fucking-Dreamland. Tell him I might come to the opening, Danny Duck requests the presence of Sergeant Ed cocksucker Exley for one more fucking dance.”
“Dick, you’re way out of line.”
“The fuck you say. One more dance, Danny Duck’s gonna break his glasses and chew his fuckin’ throat–”
“Dick, goddammit–”
“Hey, fuck you! I read the papers, I saw the personnel on that Nite Owl job. You, Dudley S., Exley, the rest of Dudley’s hard-ons. You’re fucking partners with the cocksucker who put me away, you’re sucking the same gravy case, so if you th–”
Bud threw the phone out the window. He walked down to the lot kicking things–then the Big Picture kicked him.
He should have swung for Bloody Christmas.
Dudley saved him.
Make Exley the Nite Owl hero so far–he’d be the one to send Inez back through Hell.