Free Sicilian Defense by John Nicholas Iannuzzi Page B

at him.
    â€œHush that trash, Lloyd. These guys are just like us and we’re like them. We’re just different colors, that’s all. The one color we all agree on is green—long, Uncle Sam green.”
    Tony nodded with as close to appreciation as was in him.
    â€œLet me talk to you a minute,” said Big Diamond. He rose. He just kept rising. Big Diamond was more than six-foot-four; he towered over five-foot-five Tony as he walked off to the side with him.
    â€œTell that Silver Eagle I said hello. And,” Big Diamond spoke more softly now, “if he needs some bread for the ransom, tell him just to send the word to Big Diamond.” He clapped Tony on the back.
    â€œI sure will,” said Tony, putting out his hand. His thin mouth defrosted slightly, only for an instant.
    3:00 P.M.
    Detective First Grade John Feigin turned from Mulberry Street and walked up the steps of P.S. 21, crossing the courtyard to the main entrance. It was one of the old style New York public schools, built like a limestone castle with turrets and gabled roof. How many thousands of kids had gone to this school, he wondered—how many thousands of hoods and punks, as well as decent people who now owned the stores on Mulberry and Mott Streets and the old buildings in Little Italy.
    Feigin entered and started up the stairway. A couple of straggling kids were walking through the halls. He had just wasted an entire day in court on a collar he had made—some young punk breaking into a store and assaulting the owner, who lived in the back. All day in that lousy court, and the judge gave the lawyer a postponement on some flimsy excuse just barely veiling the fact that the lawyer hadn’t yet received his fee.
    Feigin was disgruntled, and a little out of wind, when he reached the third floor. He went right to the locked room where the tape recorder was set up. The tape was voice-activated, so it only recorded when someone was actually talking in the telephone booth at the Two Steps Down Inn. Feigin opened the door and saw that an inch of new tape had wound through the sound heads.
    Well, maybe we got something this time, he thought as he rewound the used spool and replaced it with a fresh one. They’d had the booth wired hoping to get a lead on a recent homicide. Feigin put the used tape in a small Manila envelope in his pocket. He reset the machine to Record, locked the room and made his way downstairs and back to the station house.
    â€œDid you get anything?” asked Quinn, Feigin’s partner. He was sitting at his desk in the squad room, two-finger typing a report.
    â€œYeah—a sore ass sitting in court all day till the lawyer showed. Then he got an adjournment.” Feigin took various papers and the tape out of his pockets. “Papers and pigeons are going to take over the goddamn world,” he muttered. “I don’t know, twenty years on this job ought to be enough for anybody, but not me,” he said, moving around to his desk. “Me, I’ve got perseverance—twenty-three years here already.”
    â€œI know, I know,” said Lieutenant Schmidt, coming out of his office in shirtsleeves. “You’re ready to toss in your papers, right?”
    â€œOkay, Lou, rub it in. Just because I’d have nothing to do except drive my wife around, which is even worse than this lousy job.” Lou was police argot for lieutenant.
    Schmidt laughed and walked to the file cabinets against the far wall. The squad room was painted the familiar light green with white ceiling, a color scheme chosen about fifty years earlier because it was supposed to be easy on the eyes. From the looks of it now, the paint job must have been done then too, and not touched since. The room contained six desks, old wooden jobs, each with a typewriter and a phone. In one corner was a detention cage, and in another was a wall shelf where prisoners were fingerprinted. On the other side two partitioned