“Ixnay,” Scarpetti said. “Ixnay on that.”
Jacob was barely inside the studio door when the artist bumped against him—deliberately, he thought; he didn’t think him the clumsy type. Before he could react, a hand groped under his coat and jerked the Army .45 from his belt. Scarpetti held it up in front of Jacob’s face. His own was tight under a cloth cap that had seen better days, some of them on the heads of the men on his covers.
“You think Mickey’s mugs won’t pat you down? In twenty minutes you’ll be in a garbage scow on your way to Staten Island with a smile under your chin.”
“I didn’t know. Gangster etiquette is one of the things I hope to learn.”
“Just make like Harpo: Keep your mouth shut and let me do the talking.” Scarpetti laid the pistol next to a Chase & Sanborn can filled with paintbrushes.
“What about your guns?”
The artist spread his paint-stained jacket. He was unarmed. “Phonies. Plugged barrels and busted firing-pins. They’re props. I told you my weapon of choice.” He tugged it out of a slash pocket, a small clasp knife with a tarnished BSA shield on the handle.
“You stuck up a drugstore with a Boy Scout knife?”
“You’d rather be stabbed with a Bowie?”
“Still—”
“We’re not going into the joint to raid it. It’s a field trip, for chrissake.”
“How much does Irish Mickey know?”
“The truth, Jack.”
“Jacob.”
“Okay, Jake. A lie detector’s got nothing on these boys. You try to fake it, they figure you’re phony all around the track. They’ll go to work on you with pliers till they get the whole story, if there’s time. If not, bon voyage.”
“So he knows I’m a writer looking for material.”
“How you think I got the invite? Mickey’s a runt, but he’s got a head big as Roseland. He thinks you’re writing his biography.”
“Wouldn’t that be like signing a confession?”
“Jesus, you’re green. You expect him to level with you?”
“Then what’s the point?”
“The point is you get a face-to-face with the kind of guy you want to write about. You can get your plot from a police blotter. The rest is what makes ’em tick. You’re writing a novel, not a summation for the jury.”
Jacob looked at the .45 on the table. Scarpetti saw him.
“Brother, you’d never clear leather. Mickey’s all blow, but the punks he pays to loiter under the streetlight outside are Rembrandts with a switchblade.”
“‘Clear leather’?” He cocked an eyebrow.
Scarpetti made a sly grin. He pointed his chin at a new canvas on an easel, an unfinished painting of a gunslinger with Stetson pulled low and hobnail stubbles on his chin. “Cliff Cutter’s latest, Death and Texas. Elk just swiped him from Dunlap. Come 1950, you’ll have to go to the Morgan Library to find a book in hardcover.”
Saturday at twilight, Midtown Manhattan paused for air between quitting time and the crush of Broadway first-nighters. Compared to it, Greenwich Village at that hour resembled an Egyptian bazaar: Shopkeepers moved their marked-down goods to the sidewalk, shell games sprang up on every corner, booksellers displayed their wares on rolling racks, Runyonesque types worked their way through the press, looking for purses to snatch and pockets to pick. A gaunt dauber in a dirty beret leaned against a rottenstone wall with his masterworks on exhibit.
Scarpetti led the way, pausing now and then to critique a painting, open a book, admire a display of knockoff watches on a vagabond’s wrist. He was showing off for his companion, but Jacob enjoyed the performance.
At length the guide stopped, waiting for a delivery van to pass, then snapped his umpteenth cigarette butt toward a sewer grate and crossed in the middle of the block. Jacob scurried to catch up.
Ahead of them a squat brownstone made a smoky presence just inside range of a corner lamp. Jacob could smell the place from across the street: a bleak blend of dry rot, fish deep-fried in old grease, and the carcasses of rodents mummifying inside lath-and-plaster walls.
The building was at least as old as Robin Elk’s Staghunters Club, but age was the only thing they shared. The windows were opaque with filth and the rusted iron railings leaned precariously away from their footings in the concrete stoop. Plowed snow was piled in brown clots on either side.
Scarpetti bounded onto the stoop, Jacob following, and pushed a button. The bell made a dull thud inside. They waited, their breath foaming in the frigid air. Then light blossomed in a carriage lamp mounted above the door. It struggled through a paper wasp’s nest inside the glass.
It was strong enough, apparently, to illuminate the pair standing on the stoop. After a few seconds a series of locks snapped, an equivalent number of bolts grated, and the door came open four inches. A face without feature hovered inside the gap.
“Tell Mickey it’s Phil Scraps,” said Scarpetti.
The door thumped shut. Another round of silence, then light came on behind narrow gridded glass cutouts in the door and it swung wide.
Jacob followed the artist inside and wiped his feet on a coconut floor mat, scraping away slush and soot. The gatekeeper took shape: a hook-nosed, stoop-shouldered seventy in a rusty black coat buttoned from neck to insteps. He closed the door, leaning his weight against it until it went into its swollen frame, and reversed the process, twisting knobs and sliding bolts with a hand that looked like a bunch of yellow radishes. He wore a yarmulke on the back of his bald head. When he turned and started back into the house, Jacob took a step that direction. Scarpetti touched his arm, stopping him.
“They deliver here.”
They stood motionless on warped floorboards in a circle of light surrounded by gloom. It was like crouching near a campfire, listening for animals waiting for the flames to die down before they pounced.
Stop writing melodrama, Heppleman. He said it to himself under his breath, and saw the breath. It was colder inside than out. The building predated central heating.
Boards creaked. There was a staircase nearby, and someone was coming down it.
“Try not to stare,” whispered Scarpetti.
A shoe scraped the floor and then a new party came into the light and stopped, facing them.
Jacob stared.