Jean Beluga hears a key turning in the front door lock and knows that hubby Harry is home. "Had a good day?" she asks as Beluga hangs his raincoat and hat on a stand in the hall. She can tell by his expression that he's had a tough day.

     Beluga takes off his shoes and dons a pair of suede slippers, then kisses Jean on a cheekbone. "It was a good day until I learn Angelo's back in town."

     "Angelo Abrizzi?"

     "That's the guy. Remember him?"

     Jean opens the kitchen cooker door and lifts out a covered dish of beef stew. She recalls Abrizzi well. Harry helped run him out of town five - no, six years ago. Things were bad in Metro City right then. Gambling; booze; porn clubs; drug pushers; murders - all were in abundance and Metro City's Fraud Squad has inside information that the Mafia are involved. Investigations bring up Angelo's name. Police HQ put Beluga on the job - because he knows Abrizzi in person. Beluga - along with Fraud Squad detectives - manoeuvre Abrizzi into a corner and the Mafia send him to the west coast until the eastern heat cools.

     Beluga washes his hands at the kitchen sink and sits down to the stew. "Met Maxine today. Some kid gets himself punctured at her place on Lime, and Gruder shoves me on it."

     Jean sits down at the table and frowns. "I thought you were on another case."

     "I was...until Flanagan and Maybrook do their best to wreck a cafe."

     "How did they manage that?"

     Beluga cuts a potato in half. "They drive downtown in a new Cavalier - heading for Maxine's. They reach Tenth and Vine and Flanagan gets his feet mixed up between the accelerator and the brake. They charge across the junction and ram Mazola's restaurant. Luckily nobody is injured or killed - except Flanagan and Maybrook. Flanagan has a cracked vertebrae and Maybrook is nursing a broken leg. Sergeant Gruder is shrieking he is short of staff, and he sticks me on the Maxine murder."
 
     "Did you get anywhere?"

     "No, but I'm working on it." Beluga tries more beef - gorgeous. He notes Jean is still wearing her Applebank Hotel uniform. "How's the job going? Are you still working late?"

     Jean pours two coffees from a percolator. "The job's fine, but like you we have staff shortage." She is looking concerned and says, "I hear Angelo has plenty of hotels - around a hundred. How can that be?"

     "Angelo is just a front man for the Mafia. It's not like the old days where a family runs a city, now there's a command group who decide what happens. They buy whole hotel chains and if some crazy guy stands up against them - they wipe him off the map. But I hear they are looking to take over single hotel units. They find the owner, put on the pressure, and that's it."

     "The Applebank is a single unit, Harry."

     Beluga drinks coffee. "Yeah, but you will be okay."

     "So you don't think that..."

     "You will be okay. My gun will see to that."



The seven storeys of Metro City Police Headquarters show gray and sullen in the Tuesday morning sunlight. The Homicide Division is on the fourth floor amid a batch of metal tables and chairs, where the day shift of eighteen detectives exchange yarns and information. Beluga reports for duty a few minutes early and with headache bouncing off his temples, wishes he hadn't bothered. His own squad sergeant, Ken Gruder, miserable even on a good day, is in grumbling mode. He comes over to Beluga's desk.

     "Any headway on the Maxine job, Harry?"

     "Nothing much. I check witness statements as per Flanagan's notebook and I speak to Maxine. I got as far as did Flanagan. The perpetrator comes into a crowded bar; puts three slugs into a young guy called Leo, and disappears. Maxine is sitting with Leo when he goes down. Has splashes of his blood on her dress. She can't tell me more than that."

     "The perp can't just disappear," says Gruder, his gaunt face a mass of deep lines. "Find out who this Leo is - and if you can't do that, then get some bodies in for interrogation and roast 'em."

     Beluga asks after Flanagan and Maybrook.

     Gruder pushes fingers through his own thinning hair. "Huh - those two dummies! I still can't figure how Flanagan drives a car across a junction, hits the Mazola restaurant and winds up sitting with the customers who are there having breakfast. The Cavalier is one of our new cars, dammit" Worse still, we lose them both with injuries. Huh - injuries my ass! I'll give them more than that when they come back. Now we have a three-man detective squad instead of five."

     After roll call and a cup of coffee, Beluga checks with Ballistics on the three slug casings picked up at the crime scene. They identify the weapon as a .38 but that is as far as they can go. Beluga reads the John Doe file and notes that Leo's personal effects are with Evidence Control on the ground floor. With no other detectives able to give him a lead on Leo, Beluga finds the elevator is jammed on the seventh floor. He uses the stairway to reach Evidence Control where a sergeant releases Leo's bag and reminds Beluga that the bag must remain in the confines of an inspection room. Beluga checks Flanagan's admission slips and comes up with nothing - until he searches the inside pockets of Leo's jacket. He almost misses it: a piece of card, punctured by a bullet and covered partially with blood. It lays at the bottom of the pocket and is stuck to the cloth as though it is ironed on.

     It takes Beluga two minutes to ease the card loose. It is either a calling card a salesman might use, or an identification marker. And through the film of blood, Beluga reads part of a scrawled name and address:

                                                   Leo P
                                                   Cedar H
                                                   360 Ma
                                                   Metro C

     The rest of the card is fragmented, but that does not stop Beluga working out the address. He examines Leo's top-quality clothing and wonders why a well-dressed young guy should carry a card relating to Cedar Hotel, 360 Maple Avenue, Metro City. He returns the evidence - excluding the card - and collects an unmarked Cavalier from the vehicle pool.



Maple Avenue is no longer an avenue. Most buildings are demolished and nothing yet replaces them. Beluga reflects on the information he has on Leo: there are no traffic, weapons or parole violations. No B card. But Leo's surname begins with a 'P'...

     Maple runs north for twelve blocks and is loaded with derelict shanties, discarded kitchen units, shattered furniture, plastic bags bursting with rubbish, and rusting burned out vehicles. "Looks like Hurricane Susie came back" Beluga says to himself. Susie fooled the weather forecasters by changing its projected direction and instead of hitting the Bahamas, it ripped the eastern US coastline before shrieking to its own destruction close to Bermuda.

     Beluga believes in luck, but knows that good luck and bad luck play mysterious games. The Cedar Hotel is still standing: a twin storey heap of brick, timber and filth, with no particular shape after storm damage. Beluga climbs out the Cavalier and walks to the front entrance. The door is wedged open several inches against lifted floorboards. Beluga uses a shoulder to enter and the door crashes against an inside wall. It is dark, although some light is coming through part of the busted roof and the first floor. He is at the bottom of a stairway. To his left is a tiny office with 'Reception' printed on a headboard hanging over the window. There are strong stenches of food waste and urine. As Beluga's eyes adapt, he sees graffiti on the walls, carpets ripped up, and electrical wiring hanging limp from damaged ceiling fittings. He sees shoe marks in the dust. Leo's maybe? Or a sidekick? Experience tells Beluga somebody is close to him. Some jerk with a revolver - maybe with a .38? He follows the footprints over creaking floorboards and stops at a door on his left. He knocks on the door and steps aside. Knocks again - harder this time.

     "Yeah, who is it?" mumbles a tired voice.

     "A friend of Leo." Beluga holds his .38 Police Special down by his side. Bed springs creak.

     "Hang on - I'll be there in a minute." A chair grates across floorboards. The door opens, revealing a puffy-eyed man of about thirty, short, stocky, dressed in street clothes: crumpled jacket, waistcoat tight over a paunch, pants baggy and creased from never having been ironed. "And who are you?" he says, rubbing his eyes.

     "I'm a friend of Leo. Angelo sent me."

     The man shakes his head, looks confused. "Leo? Angelo? Never heard of them."

     "You never heard of Angelo Abrizzi?"

     The man turns away and sits on old army blankets laying on the bed. "Abrizzi I have heard of. Ain't he linked with the Mob?"

     "Angelo says for me to bring you in."

     "Why should somebody I don't know want to see me?"

     "He figures you have answers."

     "To what?"

     "To who killed Leo at Maxine's bar on Lime."

     "Look - mister - I don't know a Leo. And who is Maxine?"

     "Leo was shot at Maxine's beer parlor on Lime last Saturday night."

     The man shrugs. "I don't know a Leo, or Maxine, so beat it, huh, so I can sleep."

     Beluga says, "Grab your coat."

     "Why?"

     " Angelo wants a word."

     "I ain't told you my name, so how come you know if I'm the man Angelo wants to see?"

     Beluga grins inwardly. This guy is a lot smarter than he looks. "Angelo says to me there's a grubby little guy living among the dirt at the Cedar Hotel. Bring him in, he says. That's my job. So get your coat."

     "I'm wearing it."

     "Good. Confirm your name."

     "Benny...Benny Thompson."

     "That your real name?"

     "It's the only one I've been using in thirty-one years, so yeah, that's my name. What's yours?"

     "Harry."

     "And you work for Angelo?"

     "Let's just say I know the guy. Now shove your shoes on and let's go."


Benny Thompson has no qualms about where he is going but he changes tune when Beluga pulls up outside Metro City Police Headquarters. Benny notes the sign board. "Hey, Harry, are you a cop?"

     Beluga says yes and asks Benny if he is considering an escape.

     "No. Why should I? I have a clean record."

     "Okay - we talk in an interrogation room. I ask questions - and you give answers."

     Benny shrugs. "That's okay with me."

     "You won't make a run for it?"

     "I'm too fat and idle to run, Harry. Let's go talk, huh?"