“You’d better go,” he muttered.

  “Are these guys annoying you?” I asked sweetly.

  They were here to take over his sculptures, I had that all figured out. Or maybe they were threatening him, just the way their three fellow buttons had done to Nicki Tee. For all I knew, they were going to kidnap him and make him work for Johnny Ebridi, fashioning statues Ebridi could sell through his import-export business.

  One of the four left the others and advanced on me. He was heavyset and muscular like the others, and he had a mean look in his eye. All he could see was a gorgeous redhead in a mini-skirted dress, I didn’t look any more dangerous to him than would a butterfly.

  I said, “Hold it, buster.”

  He came walking on. The others waited with big grins on their faces. The guy lifted a hand to backhand me across the face.

  I took one step forward and brought my right knee up into his testicles. He opened his eyes wide and his jaw dropped. Agony showed in his eyes and he doubled up.

  My knee took him in the jaw.

  The expectant grins faded on the faces of his companions as the button slid to the floor and lay there. I looked at them over his inert body and asked, “Well? What’s the next step?”

  Two of the guys drew guns.

  That gave me the excuse I needed. I couldn’t quite bring myself to use the Gold Cup against them unless they showed me their hardware first. At least, that was the way I looked at it.

  But when those two .38s came out, my right hand emerged from the Gucci bag with the Colt automatic in it. They intended to scare me off, I guess. Their expressions when they saw the Gold Cup were ludicrous.

  I didn’t give them much time to look silly. The Gold Cup bucked in my hand. Once.

  Then a second time.

  Joel Farmer let out an agonized cry, shrinking back against a table that had a lot of clay and suchlike stuff on it, together with an assortment of mallets, chisels and all the other impediments that sculptors use.

  One of the buttons I’d shot went back two steps. He stood a moment staring at me, then at the hole in his chest. His face turned a sickly gray. He tottered, rocking back and forth on his heels. Then his eyes rolled up in his head and he pitched forward to lie prone on his front.

  The second man had reeled, turning around so that he was facing away from me when my slug went into his forehead. He was dead even as he did this, it was a bodily reaction to the force of the bullet going into him. He too fell and lay there.

  The lone remaining button stared down at his three fellows with horror in his face. It wasn’t that their deaths shocked him so much, I guess it was the idea of the suddenness of the thing, and the fact that a girl had done it.

  He snarled and came for me, forgetting all about his own gun. His hands were out there like claws and he had a mad look in his eyes.

  I stepped sideways and put out afoot. He tripped over it, went sprawling. I flung myself toward him, gun in hand, landing in the middle of his back with both knees.

  That was when Joel Farmer took a hand. He leaped for me, caught me by the arm, and threw me bodily off the button.

  “What the hell’s the matter with you?” he screamed.

  “I’m just trying to protect you, you damn fool,” I snarled, recovering my balance.

  The button was drawing his gun very slowly while Joel Farmer stood over him. There was a wild look on the sculptor’s face, disbelieving and angry. You’d have thought I’d just barged in and murdered some of his friends.

  “Get out of the way!” I yelped.

  The button’s gun came up. I dodged sideways as it blasted, and got in a shot of my own. His bullet missed, mine went into his back.

  Farmer stared down at the man. He lifted his head and glared at me. “I’m going to call the cops,” he shouted.

  “Please do. I’m a sort of cop myself.”

  That took the wind out of his sails. He swallowed a couple of times and said weakly, “A cop? You?”

  “You’d better believe it.”

  I walked forward, put a hand on his chest and shoved him back out of the way. The man I’d just shot was still alive. I reached down and turned him over. His eyes opened to glare up at me.

  “I’m from N.Y.M.P.H.O.,” I told him, putting the muzzle of the Colt to his jaw, just under it into the soft flesh of his neck.

  Awareness dawned in his eyes.

  “So talk,” I smiled. “Why were you after Joel Farmer? To steal his statues as your buddies tried to steal Nicki Tee’s paintings?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

  “Talk or I fire.”

  His hand moved. To my surprise, it still held his gun. But my trigger finger was a hell of a lot faster than that hand of his.

  The bullet blew the top of his head off.

  Joel Farmer looked sick. His face turned a pale green and his mouth opened.

  “It isn’t nice,” I admitted. “But it’s necessary with characters like these.”

  “They were just being friendly,” he managed to gasp.

  I stared at him. “Friendly? These bastards? Are you out of your skull? They’re Mafia.”

  He looked as if I hadn’t said anything. He even pouted, like a child. You’d have thought I’d stolen a toy of his.

  “Look, buster,” I snapped. “I’ve just come from Hampton Bays, where I left Nicki Tarentino. You’ve heard of him, no doubt?”

  He agreed sulkily, with a nod of his head.

  “Nicki gave me your name. He said you were an up-and-coming sculptor, and that The Family might be interested in you.”

  “So?”

  I sighed. “Three buttons tried to beat Nicki up, I stopped them. He said they might try the same thing on you, which is why I’m here. They also tried to steal Nicki’s paintings. I think they were after your sculptures.”

  My hand waved at the bronze and marble statues scattered here and there in his studio. They were good, there was a little of the modernistic about some of them all blocks and geometric forms, that didn’t make much sense to me—but there were a couple of really good ones. A woman with a child, a soldier with a broken sword, an exceptionally fine one of a horse.

  Joel Farmer snorted, “I’m not famous, like Tarentino.”

  “They were here, weren’t they? What did you think, that they’d come to buy some of your works?

  He opened his mouth, but closed it. There was a wary, suspicious look on his face I couldn’t make out. I got a sudden suspicion.

  “Hey, I didn’t interrupt a business deal, did I? They weren’t trying to con you into something?”

  “No, no. Nothing like that. As—as a matter of fact, they hadn’t really said anything, just walked in here and and stood here.”

  “I was just in time, then. Good.”

  The lone remaining button who still lived, the one I’d kneed in the nuts, groaned and stirred. I gave Joel Farmer a quick glance.

  “Would you rather leave while I finish him off?”

  His face was a mask of horror, like before. “You’re not going to kill him too, are you? In cold blood?”

  “If I don’t, tomorrow he’ll be trying to kill me, or somebody else. Man, will you get it through your head that these guys don’t play for peanuts? That violence is a way of life to them? They beat you up or they kill you, to gain their ends. A human life is nothing to them.”

  “Nor to you either.”

  “My life is, at any rate. I aim to keep it healthy. Now make up your mind, stay or get out.”

  He turned his back and went to the window, stood looking out over the city. I watched him for a moment, then caught hold of my gun and stepped above the recumbent man.

  The shot was loud in the stillness.

  Joel Farmer said, when the echoes of the shot had faded away, “Now I suppose you’ll call the police.”

  “Not the cops. My boss at N.Y.M.P.H.O., Avery King. He takes care of all the details.”

  “You just do the killing.”

  “Hey, whose side you on? You sound as if these bastards were your friends.”

  “No, they’re not friends. I don’t know any of them. But I do know they didn’t deserve to be killed that way.”

  I removed the clip from the automatic, inserted a new one. I puzzled over Joel Farmer. Maybe he was one of these idealistic young people—I’m young myself, but I know that in order to live up to your ideals everybody else has to live up to them, too—who felt that just because a person lived meant he was a good guy and couldn’t possibly be a villain.

  “All right,” I said to him finally. “What am I going to do with you?”

  His eyes got big. “Do with me? You’re not going to do anything with me. What makes you say something like that?”

  “I can’t leave you here. The Mafia will send more soldiers.”

  He sneered, “And you won’t be here to protect me, is that it?”

  I eyed him coldly. He didn’t seem very grateful for what I’d done, but I put that down to rudeness.

  I said, “That’s about the size of it. If they come here and beat up on you with their brass knuckles,

  I’d have a guilty conscience. And that’s something I don’t care to have. So for your own sake, you’d better come with me.”

  “No way.”

  I guess my surprise showed in my face because he added, “No dame is going to come here and tell me what to do. I’m staying right here, this is where I make my living and I’m not moving. Not for anyone.”

  “You’re a damn fool.”

  He shrugged. “Maybe I am, maybe I’m not. Go ahead, call this Avery King and get the cops over here to lug away these bodies. I have work to do.”

  The boy puzzled me. He was soft, yet hard, he seemed almost to be hiding something. Something I felt I should know. I moved around the studio touching a few statues as I walked, just trailing my fingertips over them.

  The statues were of bronze, I lifted one and hefted it. “Hollow?” I asked.

  “Do you know how much one of those would cost if it were solid? The copper alone would make the price prohibitive. I sell on quantity, though the quality’s there, too.”

  He came across the room and took the statue away from me and put it back on the table.

  “I’m a fast worker; I can turn out originals in a few hours, originals that’ll sell in the mass market. Most of them are smaller than these, these cost more. I do all right.”

  “Funny. Nicki Tee gave me the idea that you were a struggling young artist, that you didn’t have much more than a pot to pee in.”

  Joel sneered. “Fat lot he knows.” I made up my mind. I stalked across the threadbare carpet and reached for the phone.

  Avery King promised to get the ball rolling. Homicide would be here in a little while; I could stay around and then go down to sign an affidavit, after that I was on my own. I could also sign an affidavit covering the three dead men the police had taken out of Nicki Tee’s studio.

  When I hung up, I tried it one more time with Joel Farmer. I had to make this kid realize what he was up against.

  “Look, I did what I had to do, with those guys. It’s part of my job. I’m sorry that we seem to have gotten off on the wrong foot, but it’s my duty to warn you that they’ll be back, men like them, and they won’t beat around any bushes in their dealings with you.”

  “I can hold up my end.” Well, the hell with him. You can do only so much to help a person.

  The cops came in a few minutes, they took pictures and asked questions, they turned to Joel Farmer for corroboration of what I had said. To my surprise, he agreed with everything.

  He seemed to have had a change of heart.

  Or maybe he’d finally come to realize that what I had done, I’d done only for his own good. I got the distinct impression that he was making himself so agreeable only to get us the hell out of his studio so he could go back to work.

  It dawned on me after a time that there might be another explanation for his conduct. Joel Farmer was a more or less unknown sculptor. He might be figuring that if the Mafia moved in on him and robbed him, he’d get some publicity. And artists, like everybody else with a product to sell, need publicity to make their fortunes.

  I went down to the police precinct house to sign the affidavit, along with Joel. He seemed a little more friendly to me than he had been. He even went so far as to thank me for what I had done.

  “I guess I didn’t realize what was happening until the cops came,” he smiled. “I’d have been up the creek without a paddle, if you hadn’t ventured along.”

  “Forget it. It’s all part of my job.”

  “No, I’m really grateful. I want you to telephone me from time to time, if you’ll be so good. If anything more happens, I can tell you then, and we can make plans.”

  It was an about-face for what I was unprepared, but grateful. I studied his face a moment. He seemed to be in earnest, but I detected a faint hesitation about him. I wondered if he were lying in his teeth,

  Still, I said, “That’s a good idea, Joel. I’ll do it. You sure you don’t want to leave your pad and go somewhere else where you can be sure the Mafia won’t locate you?”

  “No, no. I’ll be fine. If anything happens I’ll just contact you.”

  Did he seem a shade too eager? I couldn’t be sure.

  We parted amicably enough, however, with Joel waving me off as I got into a police car to be driven back to his studio to get my own car. He was going downtown for some materials he needed. Or so he said.

  Once in my car I headed for the Deegan. I had a date in northern Connecticut tonight that I didn’t want to miss. J. Philip Petty had built his Roman villa there, not too far from the Massachusetts border, and I wanted to be on hand when Matt the Bat’s soldiers made their try at stealing its most valuable works of art.

  The afternoon was hot, not quite so muggy as the morning had been, so I turned the car air conditioner on as I swung onto the Cross County Expressway in Westchester and barreled along until I was on the Hutchinson Parkway. Then came the Merritt and I was in Connecticut.

  It was country up here, with trees on all sides, and once I went past a little lake. I followed the Merritt to the end, then curved onto the Wilbur Cross. I was getting hungry by this time, so when the old hunger pangs told me I’d better start thinking of my stomach, I decided to carry on until Hartford, where I detoured far enough to grab a sandwich and coffee at the Howard John son’s there.

  After that, I went back ways and little country roads until I was within the town limits of the sleepy hamlet that held Petty’s Roman villa.

  I cruised around until I came in sight of the magnificent structure based on a real Roman villa, complete with atrium and marble pillars, huge pool and ornamental gardens. It dazzled my eyeballs at first glance, I knew visitors were allowed, upon payment of a fee, so I decided to park and join the crowd that was even now edging its way toward the entrance gates.

  I figured that if any Mafia bullets were in the crowd, I could keep an eye on them. They might be here, just as I was, to get the lay of the land. To case the joint, so to speak.

  I paid the two bucks at the entry gate, then made my way along a crushed gravel path to the twin bronze doors that opened onto the big vestibule, with mosaic floor and walls covered with paintings.

  There was an enormous fortune in paintings by the acknowledged masters of the brush. Such men as Titian and Raphael were represented here, along with Rembrandt, Van Gogh and Moreau. More modern masters, Pollock, Picasso, Wyeth and Marsh. These are just a few.

  I sauntered along with the others, one eye on them and one eye on the paintings. I saw no Family types, these were all good people, fathers, mothers, children and a sprinkling of grandparents.

  Frankly, the walk through the villa and its grounds was worth the price of admission alone. God knows what Petty paid to build this place. Every inch of it represented highly specialized work.

  The interior was a work of art in itself, with the painted, carved ceilings, the pillars of twenty different types of marble scattered here and there as though they cost a penny apiece. The entire floor of the villa was in mosaic work, and I got a guilty feeling just walking on it.

  Those of us who chose to do so could go out by way of the portico into the gardens. The sunlight was warm, the day was inviting, and I wanted to see all of this place.

  Bronze and marble statues stood here and there amid rows of neatly clipped, low hedges. Small trees surrounded by low walls that held dirt, were everywhere. I wandered along the paths and sat on the benches provided for those whose legs got tired.

  The pool was awe-inspiring, set as it was between covered porticoes and framed by flowers and shrubs and ornate archways along the paths. Statuary at the other end of the pool, and gushing fountains somewhere in the middle, made me want to strip off my clothes and dive in bare-ass.

  I restrained myself. Guards lurked here and there, against any such light-headedness

  After a time I got up and just wandered about, ignoring the art and impressing on my mind the layout of the villa itself. I wanted it firmly in my mind before I came back here tonight.

  Then a bell rang somewhere in the distance and I saw the visitors coming from here and there, calling to children or hurrying to catch up to families. I joined the throng, wandered after them as we all went back out the bronze entrance doors and the walkway to the parking lot.

  It would be hours before nightfall. I had to waste some time, so I decided to do it in the best way possible. I asked a parking lot attendant where there was a good motel.

  “Not too far, maybe five miles,” he told me.

  Yes, they served meals there. Yes, I could find it easily enough, all I had to do was travel down this road to a traffic light, then keep straight on after I’d turned left at the light.

  I drove to the motel, hired a room, showered and then lay down for a nap. I wanted to be wide awake tonight. I also left a request at the desk to be summoned by a telephone call at eight o’clock.

  At eight I dressed in my black slacks and sweater, and carrying my Gucci bag, went into the dining room.

 

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