Free Runaway by Ed McBain Page A

gettin’ any damn blood on that coat.”
    â€œI won’t,” Johnny promised. He slipped into the coat, feeling the bill in the left-hand pocket. “Thanks again, Barney.”
    Barney nodded and peered over his shoulder.
    â€œGo on, boy,” he whispered urgently.
    Johnny started for the stair well. He was on the top step when Barney called, “Hey, boy.”
    Johnny turned. “Yeah?”
    â€œYou kill Luis?”
    â€œNo,” Johnny said.
    â€œI didn’t figure. Go on, boy. Good luck.”
    Johnny smiled and ran down the steps. Barney waited until he was out of sight. He opened the door to his apartment then, and began chuckling automatically before he reached the living room.

Seven
    The Club Yahoo was a small joint on Lenox Avenue. Its food was not particularly good, and its floor show—with the possible exception of Cindy Matthews—was just as bad. The prices on the liquor sold were rather high, and it’s difficult to imagine why the club flourished. It did flourish, though, and perhaps that was due to the danza exotica Cindy performed there three times each night. It was a well-known fact that Sary Morgan, the owner and sole proprietor of the club, paid a good deal of change to the gendarmes for the privilege of allowing Cindy to perform her dance.
    Sary—whose real name, Savannah, had been aborted to its present state years ago—was a rotund little man with a penchant for pretty girls. His floor show was studded with pretty, if untalented, maidens, who formed an excellent backdrop for the dance Cindy performed. When the girls were not serving as a backdrop, they floated around among the customers, inducing them to drink. And whereas Sary had named the club “Yahoo” in all sincerity, there were those who insisted on calling it “Y’Whore.”
    It took a lot of deliberation for Johnny Lane to go there, and he went with some misgivings. But he wanted a place to spend the night, and he had to see Cindy about that. He didn’t relish the idea of sleeping in some hallway. All he needed was some dame spotting him and screaming for the cops, figuring him for a drunk or something. No, he needed a place for the night, and Cindy was the only person he could think of now.
    The Club Yahoo’s bar started just inside the doorway, as if it were planned for someone to catch a quick shot with one foot outside the place. The bar ran the length of the right-hand wall in the long rectangular room. At the far end of the room a small platform sported a four-piece bop combo, and the combo was having at it hot and strong when Johnny entered the club. The tables lining the left-hand wall and then running perpendicular to the bar, leaving a square between the bandstand and the door for the floor show, were filled. The room was full of smoke and muted voices, and the bop combo blasted through the smoke with the precision skill of riveters.
    A very dark trumpeter had his horn pointed at the draperies that hung from the ceiling of the joint. And even though the bell of his horn wore a straight mute, the draperies shook a little when he cut loose. The tenor-sax man kept up a slow, rocking harmony behind the trumpet, and the drums and piano socked out a rhythm while the horn shrieked. The boys seemed to gather momentum in the final chorus. The people at the tables began banging their glasses and clapping their hands in time with the beat. Johnny stood to the left of the entrance, and he felt his own foot tapping out the rhythm as the music spread to his body.
    And then the tune ended abruptly, and the piano man threw his right hand at the keyboard, pulled out a sprinkling patter of notes and then stabbed them with some wild chords down in the bass. The drummer switched to brushes, keeping a rapid beat on the bass with one foot, lacing it with some high-hat work on the other foot. It was soft and quiet stuff, but quiet the way a .45 can be quiet when it’s just