Free Smart Moves by Stuart M. Kaminsky

chase Povey, maybe nail him. You’ve got no connection to the Bureau or the police. They’ll figure you for what you are, a private detective on a case.”
    “I could get killed,” I repeated.
    “Soldiers are dying every day over two oceans,” he said without sympathy. “Anything else?”
    “What’s the name of the guy whose house you’re in?”
    “May, Stephen P. May. Why?”
    “Does Essex three-four-six-nine sound easier to you?”
    “Goodbye, Peters,” he said and hung up.
    I adjusted my shoulder holster, checked my .38, put on my jacket, and looked in the mirror. I looked like an extra in Little Caesar , one of Arnie Lorch’s boys. I took off the holster, put it back in my suitcase, and hid the pistol in the light fixture again. The hell with it. I had nothing I could think of to do before six, so I went to the Paramount matinee, ate popcorn and watched Bob Hope get chased by spies. I didn’t like the part where the big blonde in the movie gets killed with a knife hidden in a fake snowball while she sings, “Palsy-Walsy.” It wasn’t funny. Maybe it wasn’t supposed to be. A lot of the jokes were lost. The Paramount was filling with girls in short skirts, who should have been in high school on a Thursday afternoon. The girls weren’t interested in Bob Hope. They were interested in talking.
    When the movie ended, the girls, hundreds of girls, let out a scream. With the lights on I looked around. I was the only male in the theater. Hell, I was the only adult in the theater except for Gurko Povey, who sat absolutely still about ten rows behind me. He was wearing a white suit. He didn’t want to be missed. Our eyes met. It was not love at first sight. His hands were folded on his chest and I wondered if he was hiding a snowball with a knife in it. I smiled at him. He didn’t smile back, but the girl behind him, her hair done up in curls and a white ribbon, thought I was leering at her. She curled back her lip in distaste, nudged her sorority sister and they both looked at me. I shrugged and pointed at Povey. They looked at him while music started on the stage and Ziggy Elman trumpeted “My Little Cousin.” I kept looking back at Povey over my shoulder. The son-of-a-bitch didn’t blink. His hair looked even whiter in the theater light, especially with the white suit he was wearing. I was missing the show and the girls were getting restless. One girl on my right who was probably about thirteen but could have passed for sixteen, if she hadn’t been wearing so much makeup, shoved her elbow into my ribs and hyperventilated, “He’s coming. Oh, my God. He’s coming.” Then she looked at who she had poked and got a little frightened.
    “He’s coming,” I said.
    She pulled away from me into the corner of her seat and looked at the stage. From the reaction in the crowd one might have expected the second coming of the Messiah. The girls stood up, hundreds of them, but Povey didn’t. I lost sight of him in the mob. In the noise he could have shot me with a machine gun and no one would have noticed or cared. I turned around, slouching to protect my back but not my head, and listened to Frank Sinatra sing “You’ll Never Know.” The kid next to me was crying. It was a religious experience. When a group in front of me parted for a second like the Red Sea, I caught a glimpse of Sinatra. He was wearing a grey suit with big shoulders. He looked skinny and the big bow tie on his neck made him look even skinnier. He held on to the microphone and sang, his eyes darting around at the wave of fluffy-sweatered response to each line. He looked as puzzled by the crowd as I was. Then the sea closed. I crouched and made my way down to the aisle, excusing himself as I went, catching knees in the face, clunks on the head, and comments like “Dirty old …,” “Some kind of …,” “Masher.” The girl who said “Masher” actually screamed it, but no one could hear her over the roar of applause and other shrieks