Free God Told Me To by C. K. Chandler

You’ve been working yourself ragged. I hate to think maybe you’ve overdone it.”
    “Meaning?”
    “Straw and mud, buddy. Phillips could be a puppet you created.”
    “You think I’ve lost part of the deck?”
    Jordan laughed and drove away.
    Nicholas stood with his hands in his pockets. He was surrounded by the various federal and state and city buildings which take up much of lower Manhattan. Some loomed as high, stark, black shadows in the growing darkness; the court buildings were low and sedate with long flat steps leading to the columned entrances. The architecture of the courts gave them the appearance of silhouettes from the past. There was little traffic in this part of town after business hours. The noises of traffic from a few blocks away echoed with a hollow, unnatural sound. The echoes, the looming darkness, the contrasting styles of architecture caused him to feel curiously abstracted from time and place.
    He could think of nothing he could do tonight to help his case. He had a whole night, the first in over a month, free to himself and it seemed a loss.
    There was a church nearby that he had sometimes stopped into. He headed toward it. After walking only half a block he decided a church wasn’t the place to take the mood he was in.
    He turned. Walked the short distance to Chinatown. The milling crowds, the garish splashes of neon, the babble of a language he didn’t understand, suited him. He experienced the submissive comfort of the stranger who gives himself over to an unfamiliar place. He strolled, passing windows marked with strange Chinese characters and painted dragons, windows hung with steamed orange ducks and smoked black eels, windows displaying bins of fish and squid and pegged lobsters crawling over chipped ice, windows with baskets of odd vegetables, with multicolored herbs and roots and nuts, with masks, silks, papier-mâché lions, plaster Buddhas, daggers, woks, slippers, carvings.
    He entered a phone booth and dialed Casey.

SEVEN
    Green-shaded lamps hung low over the tables in the Harlem pool hall and spilled puddles of flat white light over dusty green felt. Only one tabletop was level and untorn. There was a dank, unfriendly odor about the place. A radio sitting on top of a broken jukebox was tuned to WNCN. The classical music was incongruous with the place. A man, tall and black and wearing sunglasses, was practicing complicated shots on the good table. The man’s mustache resembled an inverted V. He was the only person in the place. The pool hall was not meant to make money—it was merely an address the tall shooter used.
    A side door opened. Detective Jordan entered.
    The shooter didn’t look up. He kept his concentration on his game. He sank the five balls that were on the table with a single shot.
    “Little early, Jordan. Mr. Straight-Arrow Nicholas let you off the leash?”
    The black man threw an envelope on the table. Jordan picked it up and put it in his pocket without opening it.
    “Always nice to see a man so trusting he don’t bother to count.”
    “You wouldn’t cheat us, Zero.”
    “Who’s the us, Jordan?”
    The detective smiled. “I’ve good news for you. One more week and Nicholas and me are done.”
    “Too bad.” Zero dropped six balls on the table and arranged them for his next shot. “Having Nicholas off the street was good for business.”
    Jordan sneered, “Why? He didn’t work Narcotics or Vice.”
    “Cop like Nicholas works everything. Not like a fat pig like you who jus’ works both ends ’gainst the middle.”
    “After next week I’ll have more time to look after your interests, Zero.”
    Zero picked up his cue stick and chalked it.
    “I figure I owe you a little more time, Zero. ’Cause starting next week the envelopes have to be bigger.”
    Zero continued chalking the cue stick. “No way.”
    “Inflationary times. Ten percent.”
    “Can’t be done.”
    “I’m only passing on my orders, Zero. You talk to the people who give