In the Best Families

“It won't wait till you get back. There's a man we want tailed and we're short of personnel, and he's tough. We had two good men on him, and he spotted both of them. You would need at least two helpers; three would be better. You use men you know, handle that yourself, and pay them and expenses out of the five hundred a day you'll get.

I whistled. “What's so hot about it?

“Nothing. It's not hot.

“Then who's the subject, the Mayor?

“I'm not naming him. Perhaps I don't even know. It's merely a straight tailing job, but it has to be watertight and no leaks. You can net three hundred a day easy.

“Not without a hint who he is or what he looks like. I waved it away. “Forget it. I'd like to oblige an old cell mate, but my vacation starts Saturday.

“Your vacation can wait. This can't. At ten o'clock tonight you'll be walking west on Sixty-seventh Street halfway between First and Second Avenues. A car will pick you up, with a man in it that wants to ask you some questions. If your answers suit him he'll tell you about the job-and it's your big chance, Goodwin.

It's your chance for your first dip into the biggest river of fast dough that ever flowed.

“What the hell, I protested, “you're not offering me a job, you're just giving me a chance to apply for one I don't want.

It was perfectly true at that point, and it was still true ten minutes later,when Max Christy left, that I didn't want the job, but I did want to apply for it. It wasn't that I had a hunch that the man in the car who wanted to ask me some questions would be Arnold Zeck, but the way it had been staged gave me the notion that it was just barely possible; and the opportunity, slim as it was, was too good to miss. It would be interesting to have a chat with Zeck; besides, he might give me an excuse to take a poke at him and I might happen to inadvertently break his neck. So I told Christy that I would be walking on

Sixty-seventh Street at ten that evening as suggested. I had to break a date to do it, but even if the chance was only one in a million I wanted it.

To get that point settled and out of the way, the man who wanted to quiz me was not Arnold Zeck. It was not even a long black Cadillac; it was only a '48 Chewy two-door sedan.