“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.
“Not in this matter, you aren’t. You’re a Treasury agent, in case you weren’t aware.”
“I’m aware that I had no communication from you indicating there were any protected persons in the case you knew I was assisting on.” Malone was more surprised by Elmer’s agitation than he was angry, and he easily kept his voice level and his own temper under control.