Manhunt. Volume 5, Number 5, May 1957

“There happened to be a serial number on the gun. That told us, after checking, that the gun belonged to a gentleman playboy by the name of Gordon Phelps.”

I trudged the dark city streets from the precinct station house toward Broadway. I dangled keys in my pocket and facts in my brain. The keys jumbled and so did the facts. Parker knew nothing and neither did I. I had a couple of extra facts, but still I knew nothing. I knew where I could lay my hands on Gordon Phelps, and Parker didn’t, but that did not bring me closer to the same solution Parker was seeking. And I knew more about Mousie Lawrence than Parker did, but that was because he was law and order and I was law and disorder.

Mousie Lawrence, born Morris Lawrence, was a fifty-year-old man with the moral scruples of a hungry hyena. He was small, wiry, rough, tough and heartless. Fifteen years ago he was still groping, clawing for his niche in the world of his peers — that was when he was apprehended and jugged for armed robbery. But Mousie was not stupid and he had come a long way since then. Ten years ago, he had hooked up with a major narcotics outfit operating out of Mexico City, and he had been paired off with Kiddy Malone. They had fitted together like a nut and a bolt, they had complemented one another: they were a rousing success in the nefarious traffic which was their milieu. They were front men, advance men, salesmen. Operating out of Mexico City, and with limitless funds at their disposal, they descended upon various points in the United States where they set up depots, organized intricate personnel, managed and stayed with an operation until it was meshed, geared, flawless, and self-performing. Then they retreated to home base, where minds concentrated on the next site of burgeoning business for this enterprising duo. Mousie was a sour little man, dry and humorless, and a teetotaler both of alcohol and drugs. Kiddy Malone was an addict, a small man like Mousie, but outgoing, robust, twinkling-eyed and happy-natured when he was on the stuff — and since he was in the business, he was always on the stuff. Kiddy’s true Christian name was Kenneth, and I was much more intimately acquainted with him than I was with Mousie Lawrence. Kiddy was an Irishman out of Dublin. Fifteen years ago he had been a seaman who had jumped ship and had remained, without benefit of quota or citizenship, in the United States. Kiddy was a womans’ man, and I had met him when he had got into trouble with his first woman (or second or third or thereabouts). He had been effusively appreciative of my efforts in his behalf and a casual acquaintanceship had ripened into a rather ribald and entertaining friendship, until Kiddy had begun to sin with the syndicate, and I had begun to disapprove of the new ways and habits of one Kiddy Malone. Before long, Kiddy’s papers were straightened out, a forged citizenship was forged for him, and he began to go to the right tailors, the right haberdashers, the right barbers, the right hooters, and he began to flash bankrolls as thick as salami sandwiches. He also began to hit the stuff himself — a mainliner — and he became a personality. Then came Mexico City, his hookup with Mousie, and the flourishing of a successful partnership.

I hailed a cab, as I thought about Mousie and Kiddy. If Mousie was in New York, so was Kiddy, and if they were in New York, they were working on a deal, and if they were working on a deal, it was not the kind of deal that Parker was talking about. Mousie and Kiddy in a mugging act was as difficult to contemplate as Rogers and Hammer-stein doing words and music for the pornography of a college-boys’ stag party. Something stank.

At Fifty-fifth and Broadway, I paid the cabbie, and once again I paid admission for the privilege of entering into the fragrant dimness of the Nirvana Ballroom. I went immediately to the bar.

“Hi, Mac,” said my bartender. “You back already?”

“Who can resist Nirvana?” I said.

“You looking for Miss Sierra?”

“Yes,” I said.

“She ain’t in a good mood, if you ask me. What did you do to her, Mac?”

“Nothing,” I said.

“Maybe that’s why she ain’t in a good mood. Why don’t you go try again?”

“I’m going,” I said.

This time I bought one dollar’s worth of tickets. I found the lady in red seated at exactly the same table, and alone. She seemed to be studying the untouched drink in front of her, but that study was not all-inclusive because she said, without looking up, “Sit down, lover. Glad you’re back. Have a drink. Glasses on the tray, bottle under the table. And it’s Scotch.”

I reached and found the bottle and it had hardly been used. I poured, restored the bottle, said, “You off the stuff?”

“Oh, I don’t deny I like to drink,” she said. “But I like to drink with company I like. You’re company I like, but you weren’t here. Where were you?”