Malone went for a walk. He just needed a little air. Some time away from Sweeney and the sweat-soaked suite. What a mess. Keeler was packing up his machine. Grossman was talking forced confinement in a mental institution. Malone supposed if a suite in the Cleveland could be finagled for almost a week, forced institutionalization might not be out of the realm of possibility. Sweeney was demanding to be released, and Ness wasn’t talking.
What a mess.
He wasn’t surprised. He always expected the worst. He planned for it. For that reason, he was always the most capable guy in the room and the most unassuming. He did not look on the bright side, because in his experience, there wasn’t one. You could always make the best of things, but most of the time, that wasn’t saying much. He was actually comforted by bad news, because he could go about making things better. When he got good news, all he could do was wait for the tides to turn.
The tides were turning.
The point was driven home when a kid, running at full speed and looking over his shoulder like he was being chased, barreled into him, driving them both back around the corner Malone had just turned.
Malone recognized his hat before he recognized the bundle of sticks in his arms. Steve Jeziorski still wore Malone’s fedora. It made him look even younger than he was. He tried to dart left, but Malone saw the feint and moved right, and backed the kid up into the wall in three steps.
“Who you running from?” He scanned the large square and the streets that fed into it. The Cleveland was a high-rise hotel that sat on the south corner of the diamond-shaped thoroughfare. It anchored the upscale shops and restaurants on every side, and it was rife with pickpockets. It was also a long way from Broadway and East Fifty-Fifth and a considerable distance from Hart Manufacturing, where Steve supposedly still lived and worked.
“Not running from anybody. Need to catch the streetcar,” the kid panted.
“You’re running the wrong way.”
“Huh. Yeah. Well. I know a shortcut.”
“Where you been, Steve?”
“I go by Jez now. Jazzy Jez.”
“That’s a stupid name, kid.”
“What would you know, Lepito?” Jeziorski spat, trying to wriggle away.
Malone frowned down at him, and the kid wilted.
“What did you just call me?” he hissed.
“That’s your name, right? Lepito? That’s what the guy told me.”
“What guy?”
“Your tail. He came around again. He asked me some questions, gave me some money, and told me you were a gangster named Lepito.”
“A gangster named Lepito,” Malone repeated. “Are you lying to me, Jazzy?”
“About what part?”
Malone was too tired to play word games with a punk kid.
“When was this? And why didn’t you tell me?”
“You told me you didn’t want my information. Remember? But if you want it now, I might know something . . . for a price.”
“How much money we talking?” Malone opened the billfold he’d lifted from the kid’s pocket.
“Hey!” Steve yelled, patting at his baggy trousers.
Malone raised his arms out of reach. “How about I don’t drag you out into the square and flag down a patrolman, and we’ll call it even?”
“I told you what I know, Mike,” the kid whined, but Malone was no longer listening. His eyes were drawn across the square to the entrance of the hotel. Elmer Irey was climbing out of a long black car. As he watched, two more cars pulled up. Both long, both black, both filled with people he didn’t know but immediately recognized.
All hell had just broken loose.
He handed Jeziorski the pilfered wallet and headed for the war zone.
“Hey, thanks, Mike,” Steve Jeziorski shouted. “You’re a good guy. That’s what I told the other fella. You’re a good guy. Not as scary as you look. If I hear anything else, I’ll come find you, okay? No charge.”
Cowles had made a call.
By the time Malone reached the suite, Sweeney was being spirited down the back stairs, Grossman and Keeler were gone, and Irey was waiting for him. Cowles and Ness sat in dejected silence, the detritus of the last week pooled around them.
“I’m sorry, Malone,” Cowles said. “We were in over our heads. We needed reinforcements.”
“Where are they taking Sweeney?” he asked.
“Go home, Ness. Cowles,” Irey said, his tone firm, even consoling. “It’s all been handled. It’s over. I’ll take care of everything.”
Ness raised bruised eyes to Malone’s, shrugged into his rumpled blue suitcoat, and walked from the room, leaving the door of the suite gaping.
Cowles followed him out, and Malone could hear him apologizing down the long hall.
“We didn’t have anything to hold him on, Eliot. I just couldn’t see any other way forward. I did this for you.”
“I know you did, Cowles. I know you did,” he could hear Ness say. Then Irey walked to the door of the suite and shut it firmly.
Malone didn’t sit. The windows had been opened to air the place out, and evening was falling gently through the drapes that had survived Sweeney’s confinement.
Irey didn’t sit either. He surveyed the room like he couldn’t believe what he was seeing and flipped on a lamp as if he needed a second witness.
“Cowles filled me in, Malone. I think I have the basic gist of it all. I’m just wondering why it was David who called me. And not you.”
Malone was silent. To defend himself would have meant throwing Eliot under the bus. And, try as he might, he didn’t know what else Eliot could have done. When every choice was rotten, you had to make a rotten choice.
“You had a respected doctor—” Irey began.
“He isn’t respected, Elmer. His wife has petitioned the court for him to be committed to an institution twice.”
“That is not the point!”
“You said he was respected, sir. As if that protects him from the law.”
“You aren’t the law!”
“I’m not?” Malone frowned, baffled.