Free Cargo for the Styx by Louis Trimble Page B

through his beak of a nose. He said, “What do you want?”
    I said, “A lot of answers. Straight ones.”
    He sat down. He ran his tongue over his lips. “I need a drink.”
    “Later. If you talk enough, you’ll work up a thirst. Then you can have some beer.”
    His expression said that beer would be fine. It also said that he wasn’t about to tell me anything, beer or no beer. I pulled the phone over to my chair. I said, “It’s getting late, and I’m due for some supper. If I don’t hear everything I want to hear in ten minutes, I call Homicide.”
    “You can’t make that threat stick, Zane.” He didn’t sound sure of himself.
    I said, “Do you know Lieutenant Nicolo, Clarence? A great guy; a great cop. Dedicated, if you know what I mean. But a little nuts. He’s got a phobia. He can’t stand an unsolved case. Right now he’s got one at Blimey’s Shack.”
    Clarence lifted his lip. He was trying a sneer but it didn’t come off. I said, “In Nicolo’s book, I’m clean. But he doesn’t like most private detectives.”
    Clarence said, “Crap,” in a way that told me he’d met policemen like Nicolo before.
    I said, “As I see it, you don’t want to meet Nicolo but you’ll take the chance. So you’ve got something big cooking. Something worth taking a pushing around for.”
    Clarence borrowed a cigarette from one of the packs I keep scattered around. He used my matches, too. He blew smoke at me.
    I got up. I brought the fish-gutting knife out of the cutlery drawer. I sat back down. I said, “I haven’t got any time to waste.”
    He looked at the knife. “What’s the idea of that?”
    I told him. He sneered at me. I said, “I’ve been pushed around, tied up, beaten. A friend of mine has been chased and maybe caught. I damn near got blown off the map today.”
    “I bleed for you,” he said.
    I said, “In about two minutes you’ll be doing just that.”
    “You haven’t got it in you,” Clarence said.
    I didn’t know whether I had or not. I got up from the chair. I walked over to him. I said, “Let’s find out if I have.”
    I shoved the knife at his leg. He pushed back in the chair. I turned the knife and caught the hook in his trousers. I ripped upward. The cloth tore open.
    I said, “I think I can, Clarence.”
    His skin was a dirty white. He tried to puff on his cigarette but he slobbered on it so that it wouldn’t draw. He began to swear at me. He wasn’t very original. He repeated himself a lot.
    He ran down. I said, “Now let’s talk about you.” He just looked at me, making a retching sound in his throat. I said, “I know I can, Clarence.”
    He still wasn’t eager to talk, but words began to come out of him. The words painted a picture. Of Clarence.
    He was a specialist. He hung around gambling dens and fancy houses. He was a patient man. Sometimes he took a month or more to find the right prospect—a man or woman gambling on the q.t. or whoring one way or another. Not big people, Clarence didn’t play them. But the medium-sized ones with a little money, a little position, a little prestige to maintain.
    Once he found his mark, Clarence gathered his evidence. Then he moved in. There would be a chance meeting, a chance remark. Do that a half dozen times to the same person over a period of a week or two and then they’re ripe for plucking by Clarence’s kind. And Clarence plucked. But he was smart. He took just what the traffic would bear and he took it only once.
    I got tired of listening to him. I said, “So now you’re in LaPlaya. Who are you going to pluck down here?”
    “I just came down to see what there was down here,” he said.
    I didn’t buy that. I said, “You wouldn’t be going after Aggie Minos or his wife, would you?”
    “They don’t mean nothing to me.”
    I said, “Then it’s someone else tied up to me. Or you wouldn’t have been on my tail. Jaspar Clift, maybe?”
    He shrugged. I said, “Or Vann.” His expression gave him away. I said,