The Cutie Read Free

and hazel-colored, her skin warm-looking and tanned. Her face was framed by that soft black hair, deep as night in the glow from the table lamp. Her body, outlined beneath the sheet, was full and firm and curving, and I didn’t want to call Ed Ganolese or worry about Billy-Billy Cantell, all I wanted to do was crawl under that sheet beside that warm soft body—
    I looked away from her and sat down on the edge of the bed. “A couple minutes more,” I said. “I’ve got to call Ed.”
    “Do you want me to wait in the kitchen?” Ella was a smart woman, and a good woman to have around. I don’t think she ever really approved of Ed Ganolese and my job, but she never said anything about it. She just ignored it, didn’t want me to talk to her about anything I did, didn’t want to hear anything about it at all. And she assumed that I wouldn’t want her to know very much about my work, so she moved out of hearing range whenever I had to talk business with anyone.
    But this time it didn’t really matter. Billy-Billy had arrived, I would call Ed, he would tell me to do what I already knew I had to do, and that would be all there was to it. So I said, “It isn’t important. You don’t have to get up.”
    “Hurry,” she said.
    I was afraid to look at her. “I will,” I said, and reached for the phone on the bedside table. I dialed Ed’s home number, and waited for eight rings. Then Tony Chin, Ed’s bodyguard, answered, and I told him who I was and that I wanted to talk to Ed. He grunted, and clanked the phone down on a table or something. I’ve never heard Tony Chin do anything else but grunt. If he knows how to talk, you can’t prove it by me.
    I waited a few minutes, and finally Ed came on the line. “It’s after three in the morning, Clay,” he said. “This better be important.”
    “I’m not sure it is,” I admitted. Then I filled him in, telling him what Billy-Billy had told me, and wound up by saying that Billy-Billy had begged me to call him.
    “That’s no good,” he said thoughtfully. “You did right, calling me.”
    “Want me to give him an accident, Ed?”
    I heard Ella make a quick sound behind me, and for a second I wished I’d told her to go to the kitchen after all. In the two weeks Ella’d been living with me, the fact that I was occasionally called on to give people accidents had been carefully ignored by both of us. I wasn’t sure what her reaction would be.
    But my worrying about Ella lasted only a second. Then Ed answered my question, with a loud and surprisingly vehement “No!” and I spent a couple of blank seconds trying to figure out what that meant.
    Ed went on, “Get him out of the city. Right away. Take him up to Grandma’s. When you get back, call me.”
    “Now, Ed?” I threw Ella a helpless look.
    “Of course, now. You want to wait till the law shows up?”
    “Ed,” I said, “I’ve got something on the fire here—”
    “Turn the fire off, put a cover on the pot, and get going. Call me when you get back to town.”
    “I don’t get it, Ed. Billy-Billy isn’t anybody. He isn’t worth fifteen cents for parts.”
    “I’ll give it to you in words of one syllable,” he said. “Billy-Billy has friends across the big water. Somebody he met over there during the war, somebody big. He knows better than to try to use the in for anything, because it isn’t that strong. But it’s strong enough to make us help him out of this. The guy wouldn’t like it if he found out we’d thrown Billy-Billy to the wolves.”
“We won’t tell him,” I suggested. “
    Fine idea. Only trouble is, Joe Pistol’s here.”
    “Who? I don’t think I know the name.”
    “He just got off the boat, bringing greetings from all our friends overseas. He hopes the New York branch is doing well. He’s what you might call an inspector.”
    “Oh,” I said. Then I knew what Ed meant. Practically every ounce of narcotics in the country is imported, because it’s a little too dangerous to