"Hard to begin," said the other.
"Start anywhere. Life is brighter for me now."
"It isn't always healthy to get too curious about other people's business around here. . . ."
"True," Croyd agreed.
"On the other hand, people love to gossip, to speculate." Croyd nodded, kept eating.
"It's no secret about the way you sleep, and that's got to keep you from holding a regular job. Now, you seem more of an ace than a joker, overall. I mean, usually you look normal but you've got some special talent."
"I haven't got a handle on it yet, this time around."
"Whatever. You dress well, you pay your bills, you like to eat at Aces High, and that ain't a Timex you're wearing. You've got to do something to stay on top-unless you inherited a bundle."
Croyd smiled.
"I'm afraid to look at the Wall Street journal," he said, touching the stack of papers at his side. "I may have to do something I haven't done in a while if it says what I think it's going to say."
"May I assume then that when you work your employment is sometimes somewhat less than legal?"
Croyd raised his head, and when their eyes met Jube flinched. It was the first time Croyd realized that the man was nervous. He laughed.
"Hell, Jube," he said. "I've known you long enough to know you're no cop. You want something done, is that it? If it involves stealing something, I'm good at that. I learned from an expert. If someone's being blackmailed I'll be glad to get the evidence back and scare the living shit out of the person doing it. If you want something removed, destroyed, transported, I'm your man. On the other hand, if you want somebody killed I don't like to do that. But I could give you the names of a couple of people it wouldn't bother."
Jube shook his head.
"I don't want anybody killed, Croyd. I do want something stolen, though."
"Before you go into any details, I'd better tell you that I come high."
Jube showed his tusks,
"The-uh-interests I represent are prepared to make it worth your while."
Croyd finished the pancakes, drank coffee, and ate a Danish while he waited for the waffles.
"It's a body, Croyd," Jube said at last. "What?"
"A corpse."
"I don't understand."
"There was a guy who died over the weekend. Body was found in. a dumpster. No ID. It's a John Doe. Over at the morgue. "
"Jeez, Jube! A body? I never stole a body before. What good is it to anybody?"
Jube shrugged.
"They're willing to pay real well for it-and for whatever possessions the guy had with him. That's all they wanted said."
"I guess it's their business what they want it for. But what kind of money are they talking?"
"It's worth fifty grand to them."
"Fifty grand? For a stiff?" Croyd stopped eating and stared. "You've got to be kidding."
"Nope. I can give you ten now and forty when you deliver. "
"And if I can't pull it ofl?"
"You get to keep the ten, for trying. You interested?" Croyd took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "Yeah," he said then. "I'm interested. But I don't even know where the morgue is."
"It's in the medical examiner's office at Five-Twenty First Avenue. "
"Okay. Say I go over there and-"
Hairy came by and laid a plate of sausages and hash browns before Croyd. He refilled his coffee cup and placed several bills and some coins on the table.
"Your change, sir."
Croyd looked at the money.
"What do you mean?" he said. "I didn't pay you yet."
"You gave me a fifty."
"No, I didn't. I'm not finished."
It looked as if Hairy smiled, deep within the dark dense pelt that covered him entirely.
"I wouldn't stay in business long if I gave away money," he said. "I know when I'm making change."
Croyd shrugged and nodded. "I guess so."
Croyd furrowed his brows when Hairy had left, and he shook his head.
"I didn't pay him, Jube," he said.
"I don't remember seeing you pay him either. But he said a fifty. . . . That's hard to forget."
"Peculiar, too. Because I was thinking of breaking a fifty here when I was done."
"Oh? Do you recall when the thought passed through your mind?"
"Yeah. When he brought the waffles:"
"Did you actually have a mental image of taking out a fifty and handing it to him?"
"Yes."
"Interesting. . . ."
"What do you mean?"
"I think that may be your power this timesome kind of telepathic hypnosis.
You'll just have to play with it a bit to get the hang of it, to find its limits."
Croyd nodded slowly.
"Please don't try it on me, though. I'm screwed up enough as it is today."
"Why? You got some stake in this corpse business?"
"The less you know the better, Croyd. Believe me."
"Okay, I can see that. I don't really care, anyway. Not for what they're paying," he said. "So I take this job. Say everything goes smoothly and I've got this body. What do I do with it?"
Jube withdrew a pen and a small notebook from an inside pocket. He wrote for a moment, tore off a sheet, and passed it to Croyd. Then he dug in his side pocket, produced a key, and put it next to Croyd's plate.
"That address is about five blocks from here," he said. "'Rented room' ground floor. The key fits the lock. You take it there, lock it in, and come tell me at the stand."
Croyd began eating again. After a time, he said, "Okay."
"Good."
"But they've probably got more than one John Doe in there this time of year.
Winos who freeze to death-you know. How do I know which one is the right one?"
"I was getting to that. This guy's a joker, see? A little fellow. About five feet tall, maybe. Looks kind of like a big bug-legs that fold up like a grasshopper's, an exoskeleton with some fur on it, four fingers on his hands with three joints each, eyes on the sides of his head, vestigial wings on back .
. ."
"I get the picture. Sounds hard to confuse with the standard model."
"Yes. Shouldn't weigh much either."
Croyd nodded. Someone in the front of the restaurant said, ". . . pterodactyl!"
and Croyd turned his head in time to see the winged shape flit by the window.
"That kid again," Jube said.
"Yeah. Wonder who he's pestering this time?"
"You know him?"
"Uh-huh. He shows up every now and then. Kind of an aces fan. At least he doesn't know what I look like this time. Anyway. . . . How soon do they need this body?"
"The sooner the better."
"Anything you can tell me about the setup at the morgue?"
Jube nodded slowly.
"Yes. It's a six-story building. Labs and offices and such, upstairs. Reception and viewing area on the ground floor. They keep the bodies in the basement. The autopsy rooms are down there, too. They have a hundred and twenty-eight storage compartments, with a walk-in refrigerator with shelves for kids' bodies. When somebody has to view a body for ID purposes, they put it on a special elevator which lifts it to a glass-enclosed chamber in a waiting room on the first floor."
"So you've been there?"
"No, I read Milton Helpern's memoirs."
"You've got what I'd call a real liberal education," Croyd said. "I should probably read more myself."
"You can buy a lot of books for fifty grand." Croyd smiled.
"So, we've got a deal?"
"Let me think about it a little longer-over breakfastwhile I figure out just how my talent works. I'll come by your stand when I'm done. When would I pick up the ten grand?"
"I can get it by this afternoon."
"Okay. I'll see you in a hour or so."
Jube nodded, raised his massive bulk, slid out of the booth.
"Watch your cholesterol," he said.
Blue cracks had appeared in the sky's gray shell, and sunlight found its way through to the street. The sound of trickling water came steadily now from somewhere to the rear of the newsstand. Jube would normally have thought it a pleasant background to the traffic noises and other sounds of the city, save that a small moral dilemma had drifted in on leathery wings and destroyed the morning. He did not realize he had made a decision in the matter until he looked up and saw Croyd looking at him, smiling.
"No problem," said Croyd. "It'll be a piece of cake." Jube sighed.
"There's something I've got to tell you first," he said. "Problems?"
"Nothing that bears directly on the terms of the job," Jube explained. "But you may have a problem you didn't know you had."
"Like what?" Croyd said, frowning. "That pterodactyl we saw earlier . . . ?F
"Yeah?.,
"Kid Dinosaur was headed here. I found him waiting when I got back. He was looking for you."
"I hope you didn't tell him where to find me."
"No, I wouldn't do that. But you know how he keeps tabs on aces and high-powered jokers . . . ?"
"Yeah. Why couldn't he be into baseball players or war criminals?"
"He saw one he wanted you to know about. He said that Devil John Darlingfoot got out of the hospital a month or so ago and dropped out of sight. But he's back now. He'd seen him near the Cloisters earlier. Says he's heading for Midtown."
"Well, well. So what?"
"So he thinks he's looking for you. Wants a rematch. The Kid thinks he's still mad over what you did to him the day the two of you trashed Rockefeller Plaza."
"So let him keep looking. I'm not a short, heavyset, darkhaired guy anymore.
I'll go get the stiff now-before someone buys him a short bier."
"Don't you want the money?"
"You already gave it to me."
"When?"
"What's your first memory of my coming back here?"
"I looked up about a minute ago and saw you standing there smiling. You said there was no problem. You called it 'a piece of cake.'"
"Good. Then, it's working."
"You'd better explain."
"That's the place where I wanted you to start remembering. I'd been here for about a minute before that, and I talked you into giving me the money and forgetting about it."
Croyd withdrew an envelope from an inner pocket, opened it, and displayed cash.
"Good Lord, Croyd! What else did you do during that minute?"
"Your virtue's intact, if that's what you mean."