The address on Tamm was a block off the Clayton Avenue business district, a big square two-story white-trimmed brown-brick building with four windows across on either floor. More an apartment complex, then, than a rooming house. I found him in the alley at the rear, wrestling a garbage can to the paving’s edge across a slightly sloping back yard, to join its tin-can twins. It was hot today and I didn’t envy him. Or feel any sympathy.

The tall, broad-shouldered man in t-shirt, overalls and work boots was huffing and puffing, a guy who’d been almost fat and was now nearly skinny, in a sick-looking way, skin hanging off him like a suit the wrong size. His black hair was threaded silver but his heavy eyebrows were charcoal smears against ghostly-white flesh, the face on the bucket head having the look of a man perpetually wondering who might be sneaking up behind him.

As he set the can down next to the others, heaving a sigh, he provided an easy irony: they had nicknamed him the Shadow, both the cops and the crooks, after the old radio show, because as a young officer he was known to prowl the back yards and alleys, looking for thieves, numbers runners and other evils found in the hearts of men.

Another irony about it came easy, too: Lou Shoulders had really been looking for crooks to shake down, thriving on bribes from pimps, prostitutes and gamblers in the midtown Eleventh Precinct police district on Newstead Avenue, where he eventually was nightwatch commander. Not that he hadn’t collared his share of bad guys—he’d killed three, including two prison escapees and a “burglar” who invaded the happy Shoulders home. Whispers had it the “burglary” was a bungled hit on a cop despised by one and all.

“Should you be doing that kind of heavy lifting?” I asked. “Didn’t you have a heart attack in stir?”

He looked at me suspiciously. Of course he probably looked at everybody suspiciously.

“Do I know you?” His voice was deep and hoarse.

“Well, we had a memorable fifteen minutes at the Coral Court once. But who in St. Louis hasn’t?”

“Nate Heller,” he said, pursing his lips like he didn’t like the taste. He grunted an excuse for a laugh. “I heard you was around.”

“I try not to hide my light under a bushel.”

The upper thick lip made a sneer. “You could get in trouble, the things I know about you that night.”

“Not as much trouble as you, Lou. Another perjury rap, for openers. Did you really have a heart attack? Or was that just a way to serve out your stretch in a medical facility?”

“I did have a heart attack,” he said defensively. “I’m a sick man. I don’t wanna talk to you. It’s not good for me.”

He wasn’t wrong.

“Look,” I said, friendly, leaning a hand on a tin lid, “just think of it as another visit to the doctor. Something you might as well get out of the way.”