The Mugger 87th Precinct Series, Book 2 - By Ed McBain Page 0,9

mouth. She looked at the blood in the darkness, and then she hissed, “Don’t touch me again, you punk!”

He brought back his fist. She kicked him suddenly, and he bent over in pain. She struck out at his face, her fleshy fists bunching, hitting him over and over again.

“You stupid…” he started, and then he caught her hands and shoved her back against the wall. He hit her twice, feeling his bunched knuckles smashing into her stupid, ugly face. She fell back against the wall, moaned, and then collapsed to the concrete at his feet.

He stood over her, breathing heavily. He looked over his shoulder, staring off down the street, lifting the sunglasses for a better view. There was no one in sight. Hastily, he bent down and retrieved the purse from where it had fallen.

The woman did not move.

He looked at her again, wondering. Dammit, why had she been so stupid? He hadn’t wanted this to happen. He bent down again, and he put his head on her bosom. She was breathing. He rose, satisfied, and a small smile flitted across his face.

He stood over her, and he bowed, the hand with the purse crossing his waist gallantly, and he said, “Clifford thanks you, madam.”

And then he ran into the night.

The bulls of the 87th Squad, no matter what else they agreed upon, generally disagreed upon the comparative worth of the various stool pigeons they employed from time to time. For as the old maid remarked upon kissing the cow, “It’s all a matter of taste,” and one cop’s pigeon might very well be another cop’s poison.

It was generally conceded that Danny Gimp was the most trustworthy of the lot, but even Danny’s staunchest supporters realized that some of their colleagues got better results from some of the other birds. That all of them relied heavily upon information garnered from underworld contacts was an undisputed fact; it was simply a question of whom you preferred to use.

Hal Willis favored a man named Fats Donner.

In fact, with Donner’s solicited and recompensed aid, he had cracked many a tough nut straight down the middle. And there was no question but what Clifford, the mugger with the courtly bow, was beginning to be a tough nut.

There was only one drawback to using Donner, and that was his penchant for Turkish baths. Willis was a thin man. He did not enjoy losing three or four pounds whenever he asked Donner a question.

Donner, on the other hand, was not only fat; he was Fats. And Fats, for the benefit of the uninitiated, is “fat” in the plural. He was obese. He was immense. He was mountainous.

He sat with a towel draped across his lap, the thick layers of flesh quivering everywhere on his body as he sucked in the steam that surrounded him and Willis. His body was a pale, sickly white, and Willis suspected he was a junkie, but he’d be damned if he’d pull in a good pigeon on a holding rap.

Donner sat, a great white Buddha, sucking in steam. Willis watched him, sweating.

“Clifford, huh?” Donner asked. His voice was a deep, sepulchral rattle, as if Death were his silent partner.

“Clifford,” Willis said. He could feel the perspiration seeping up into his close-cropped hair, could feel it trickling down the back of his neck, over his narrow shoulders, across his naked backbone. He was hot. His mouth was dry. He watched Donner languishing like a huge contented vegetable and he cursed all fat men, and he said, “Clifford. You must have read about him. It’s in all the papers.”

“I don’t dig papers, man,” Donner said. “Only the funnies.”

“Okay, he’s a mugger. He slams his victims before he takes off, and then he bows from the waist and says, ‘Clifford thanks you, madam.’”

“Only chicks this guy taps?”

“So far,” Willis said.

“I don’t make him, dad,” Donner said, shaking his head, sprinkling sweat on to the tiled walls around him. “Clifford. The name’s from nowhere. Hit me again.”

“He wears sunglasses. Last two times out, anyway.”

“Cheaters? He flies by night, this cat?”

“Yes?”

“Clifford, chicks, cheaters. All Cs. A cokie?”

“We don’t know.”

“C, you dig me?” Donner said. “Clifford, chicks…”

“I caught it the first time around,” Willis answered.

Donner shrugged. It seemed to be getting hotter in the steam room. The steam billowed up from hidden instruments of the devil, smothering the room with a thick blanket of soggy, heat-laden mist. Willis sighed heavily.

“Clifford,” Donner said again. “This his square handle?”

“I don’t know.”

“I mean, dad, I grip with a few