I said thank you, because you let me hear what you had to say. Matters that could even most remotely concern us. I say that our research department makes a point of informing each of us here of any diverse matters. Then you know that he was murdered last night in a cheap hotel. Man named Tom Keeler had a checking account here. The man considered it, digested it, and when he had it all in order, motioned me to the chair the guard had placed discretely close to him. He muted his voice to the extracurricular business I had brought to the Great Northern, offered it to the man. Unerringly, the guard chose one - the right one. It wasn't the moment to intrude any longer on such private pleasures, so I left him.Īt the Great Northern National Bank, a guard, uniformed in tattle-tale grey, took my name, my business, walked down a marble aisle with them - and aisle lined with identical desks, identical faces behind them. Leaned against the mail rack, scratched his back with it. Quantrio, thanks a lot.Īnd for that, Randy Quantrio winked at me, laughed noiselessly at me. Please come in and talk to us with regards to your commercial account at your earliest convenience. Oh, he got mail this mornin', maybe I oughta tell ya' that. So, what I'm sayin' is I never seen anybody sneak past this desk that I said to myself, "There's a Tom Keeler visitor." We got a sign in each and every room, says no smokin' in bed, and in the last year we had three mattress fires. No Visitors.Īnd you think just because the sign is there, Tom Keeler didn't have any visitors? Look at the sign over my shoulder: N-O Visitors. I know some Clovers down in Selma, Alabama. That's about the extent of my to do with him. You had a little trouble here last night, didn't ya'? Ring a bell.īe greeted by the man in grey suspenders and no shirt. To the five story brown stone that seemed to list from the pressure of the insurance housing project next door to it. Then outside in the squad car, the ride to West 35th Street and to the Nixon Hotel. The breath of air not controlled by a thermostat. Leave, go, get out, and hurry.Īnd in the corridor, find what you're looking for. In a room of no value except to the dead, except to those whose business is with death. And the ingredients of it were a medical examiner, a murdered man, and two bullets. You want these, huh?Īnd that's the way my day began. No other word to the living about why such things has to happen.Įach wound was a mortal wound, Danny. A name, Tom Keeler, an address, The Nixon Hotel. When they brought him to me last night, there was a tag on him. What is known is only one of these was needed to kill him. They found him in his bed last night, murdered. Walk up to the man who waits for you.Ī nervous twitch, Danny, to juggle things in my right hand. You walk the corridor to the room of the dead, through the swinging doors into a place without season, where all nights, all days are of equal length, where temperature is constant, where the wind is conditioned before it's let flow over death. Come down, I've got something of interest to you. Because the day is still fresh, you put off the reaching for them, the touching of them, but it screams close to your ear. And that's watchya' do, kid, because on Broadway there's no other choice.Īnd at police headquarters, the September's day has arranged its wares of violence on your desk, stacked as to category, degree, grade. That's a winter sun on your shoulder and the day is short, so buy. In autumn sunlight the September day trots out its promises for Broadway's consideration, displays them in doorways, in push carts, in gutters, decorates them with price tags, invites you to browse - don't touch", "buy - don't squeeze", and at cut rates of secondhand delights, the prices slashed down to any man's purse, the bold end of dreams. "Broadway's My Beat," with Larry Thor as Detective Danny Clover. From Times Square to Columbus Circle, the gaudiest, the most violent, the lonesomest mile in the world. Street sounds (car horns, etc.) until OUTīroadway's my beat.
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