Free Brass Go-Between by Ross Thomas Page B

course.”
    “Of course. I also pressed him about the use of the FBI; he promised me that they would not be called in. You know something?”
    “What?”
    “Perhaps I should have gone into the diplomatic service instead of law—especially if Cox is typical of what State has working for it.”
    “You could have made a great contribution,” I said with as much sincerity as I could muster.
    “I might’ve at that,” Myron Greene said. “Keep me informed, Philip.”
    “Every step of the way.”
    When he hung up I called down to the desk and asked Eddie, the day bellhop, to bring me up a steak sandwich and a glass of milk.
    “Steak’s not too good today,” he said.
    “How’s the liverwurst?”
    “Better.”
    “Make it a liverwurst.”
    While I waited for him, I endorsed the check, put it in an envelope, and addressed it to Myron Greene. When Eddie arrived with the sandwich, I paid him, gave him two dollars to put on a horse I’d picked on the plane, and a letter to mail.
    “They’re out of six-cent stamps at the cigar stand again,” he said. “But I got some.”
    “How much?”
    “Dime each?”
    “I’ll buy one,” I said, and handed him a dime. It’s what I’ve always liked about New York. Neighborly.
    I ate the sandwich and spent the rest of the afternoon waiting for the phone to ring and reading a paperback novel that I’d picked up in the Washington airport. It was about a CIA man who wandered around Red China for a couple of years doing good works like poisoning the water supply.
    By six o’clock the phone hadn’t rung so I waited until six-fifteen and then dialed a number. A man’s voice said, “A to Z Garage.”
    “Parisi there?”
    “Who?”
    “Parisi,” I said slowly, pronouncing each syllable with care. “Johnny Parisi.”
    “Nobody here by that name.”
    “Just tell him it’s Philip St. Ives.”
    “St. what?”
    “Ives,” I said. “You want me to spell it?”
    “Lemme see.”
    I waited a while and then Parisi came on the phone with, “Hello, Lucky.”
    “I like your new secretary.”
    “You mean Joey. He’s something, isn’t he?”
    “Something’s as good a description as any.”
    “By the way, when I got home last Saturday from your place, I found out I really took a bath. I dropped nearly nine hundred bucks and most of it to Ogden.”
    “He needs it. His daughter’s starting to college next month.”
    “Like shit he needs it. With what he knocks down he could send a dozen of them to college and never miss it.”
    “Nobody’s that rich.”
    “Maybe you’re right,” Parisi said. “It ain’t like when you and me were going to college. I don’t understand these kids today, always raising hell and trying to take over the schools.”
    “They’re different,” I said.
    “Maybe they ought to have to work their way through like we did,” Parisi said, apparently convinced that missing six set shots in a row qualified as work.
    “You free for dinner tonight?” I said.
    “I’ve got to see a guy downtown about ten.”
    “Come over around eight and I’ll buy you a steak.”
    “Dominic’s?” he said.
    I sighed. Dominic’s meant a forty-dollar tab at least. “Dominic’s.”
    “Okay,” Parisi said. “At eight.” I started to say good-by, but he said, “You’re working again, aren’t you?”
    “I’m working.”
    “I figured as much,” he said, and hung up.
    Dominic’s was a medium-sized restaurant on West 54th Street that had leaped into popularity and a measure of notoriety after a Hollywood motion-picture star began to use it as his New York headquarters because it was quiet, the food was good, and a friend of his who was fairly prominent in the criminal hierarchy owned thirty percent of it. The actor once held court in a small alcove just off the main dining room until the word got around and the out-of-town tourists started to flock there and order things like spaghetti and meatballs and even pizza, which made the chef angry enough to