Free Other Than Murder by John Lutz

 
    Frank Quinn was wearing his dark mourning suit beneath a black overcoat. A knit muffler was wrapped tightly around his throat, and his large hands were encased in black leather gloves. He was still cold, not only because of the weather but because of what he was about to do.
    Looking around didn’t make him feel any warmer. This was the seventies, and the Times Square area was a mess and getting worse. Many of the great old theaters were closed. Peep shows and X-rated bookshops had taken their place. Discarded needles crunched like candy beneath Quinn’s clunky black size-twelve shoes. It was too cold for prostitutes to be roaming the streets this brisk December morning, but various other suspicious and more malevolent types were braving the biting wind to walk the stone canyons looking for whatever kind of score they wanted or needed. The wind set the litter in the street into motion, the flyers and cigarette butts and crumpled newspaper. With each gust, empty beer cans went rolling. It was no wonder people referred to the area as “Slime Square.”
    Quinn was on his way to see some of that slime now. Its name was Malvin. If it had a last name, nobody knew it.
    Next to a pawnshop on West 45 th Street was a battered wooden door that opened on a narrow flight of stairs leading to Malvin’s office. Quinn opened the door, stepped inside out of the wind, and found himself next to a gigantic black man wearing a brown vest over a tie-dyed T-shirt. His bulky tattooed arms were bare. Quinn didn’t know him but knew he was called Heap.
    “Aren’t you cold, dressed like that?” Quinn asked, closing the door behind him.
    Heap smiled with gold-adorned teeth. “Yeah, I need me some action to keep warm.”
    Quinn, not yet twenty-five, and lean and hard from doing rough work on the docks, might have furnished more action than Heap could handle, but that wasn’t why he’d come here.
    Quinn knew the next step in the dance. He moved back slightly and raised both arms and let Heap frisk him to make sure he wasn’t armed. There was only one reason he could be here–to see Malvin. And nobody with a weapon went up those stairs.
    Heap closely examined the various contents of Quinn’s many pockets. He seemed satisfied and returned them.
    “I’ve got an appointment,” Quinn said.
    “Yeah, I know that. I don’t like seeing anything wrapped up. Makes me uneasy. Whatcha got in there?”
    Heap started to take a brown paper sack from Quinn’s outside coat pocket, but Quinn moved faster and opened the bag to show what was inside. “A gift,” he said. “Fine Irish whiskey.”
    “Ain’t that nice,” Heap said, squinting appreciatively at the brand. He let the bottle slide back into the bag, stepping aside so Quinn could pass. “You go on up.”
    Quinn didn’t like the stairwell. It felt confining and smelled as if something had died inside a wall.
    After climbing the squeaking wooden steps, he knocked on the door. It wasn’t closed far enough to latch and swung open at his knock to reveal Malvin, seated at a wide, littered desk. He was a huge man with shoulder-length red hair, freckles the size of moles, and a complexion so florid it glowed. He was wearing a green leisure suit with a floral pattern, his silk shirt collar laid over the coat’s collar. His eyes were blue and bloodshot. He didn’t say hello, didn’t get up, didn’t so much as nod at Quinn.
    Ignoring this dearth of hospitality, Quinn walked into the office and sat in the chair facing the desk. He didn’t remove his coat or gloves.
    “What’s that?” Malvin asked, nodding toward the paper sack.
    Quinn drew out the bottle of Irish whiskey and stretched to hand it to Malvin. “Call it a peace offering,” he said.
    Malvin sneered. “I didn’t know we were at war.”
    “We might have been. You did kill my younger brother.”
    “I wasn’t anywhere near when he was shot.”
    “Had him killed.”
    Quinn realized that the man before him, who ran much of