Down Here (2 page)

“It’s righteous,” I said. “I wish it wasn’t. All I want is to find out if the cops are planning to splash it. She’ll be arraigned tonight. I need to know if there’s going to be coverage.”

“Something like that, it’ll certainly make the—”

“I don’t care about TV, or even the radio. I just want to know if there’re going to be reporters
in
the courtroom. Especially veterans.”

“Ones who might recognize you?”

“
You
wouldn’t recognize me,” I promised him. “I just need to know who’s going to be watching, you understand?”

“There’s a story in this,” Hauser said, an apostle reciting the creed.

“Thought you didn’t do crime anymore,” I said.

“I spend all my time covering lawyers,” he laughed. “How far away do you think
that
takes me?”

“The story is, Wolfe’s being set up. I don’t know anything else about it. Not yet, anyway.”

“But when you find out?”

“It’s all yours, pal.”

“Call back in twenty minutes,” Hauser said.

^“
E
verybody’s
on it,” Hauser said when I called back. “But the DA isn’t making any statements . . . yet.”

“So there’ll be reporters on the set?”

“Guaranteed,” he said. “Come on by and say hello.”

I
took a quick shower, shaved extra-carefully, and put on a slouchy black Armani suit over a midnight-blue silk shirt, buttoned to the throat. I added a pair of natural alligator shoes, a two-carat solitaire ring set in white gold, and an all-black Rado watch. There wasn’t enough time to get the right haircut, but a gel-and-mousse combination got me close enough to the look I wanted.

The emergency surgery that brought me back from what was supposed to be a
coup de grâce
bullet had changed my face forever. Once, I could have passed for a lawyer, with the right clothes and props. And I had done it, plenty of times. Now the best I could hope for was to be taken for a higher class of defendant.

I walked downstairs carefully, a Mini Mag lighting the way. Gateman was where he always is.

“Thanks, partner,” I said, palming a fifty in my handshake.

“We expecting more company, boss?”

“Could be. But not the blue boys,” I said, telling him what he needed to know. Gateman’s on parole. New York City parole, which means all he has to do is call in every few months, so they know he’s alive. But a visit from the cops would be a real problem for him. Gateman doesn’t like surprises. And he’s a shooter.

I
t was only a few blocks to my car. I keep it behind a ratty old two-pump gas station that scratches out a living from used tires, dented hubcaps, and tired batteries. They also sell some specialized parts for cab drivers . . . like recalibrated meters that tick off a mile for every four-fifths they run. Word is you can buy other things there too, but I never asked.

My ’69 Plymouth Roadrunner sat outdoors in a chain-link enclosure, under a roof made of woven concertina wire, protected by a combination lock thick enough to sneer at two-handed bolt cutters.

The setup had been built for the owner’s prize pit bull, a vicious old warrior who had been retired to stud a few years ago. The owner kept a couple of bitches, too, so his champion wouldn’t get bored and maybe chomp his way through the chain link. I’d talked the owner into letting me park the Plymouth inside the cage. It cost me three bills a month, and a few weeks’ daily investment in getting the pits to accept me enough to let me inside whenever I showed up, but it was worth it. The back of the gas station was always in darkness or shadow, and the dogs made sure nobody got too close a look at the anonymous junker stashed back there.

One of the bitches strolled over to the fence as I walked up. She snarled softly, just warming up.

“It’s me, stupid,” I said.

I didn’t know any of their names. But they knew me, and they knew I never came empty-handed. The big rooster trotted over, chesty and confident, knowing he was going to get first dibs.

I took a slab of porterhouse out of the plastic bag I’d been carrying and unwrapped it. Then I slipped it between the sections of metal tubing that framed the doors.

The pits went to work on their prize as I dialed the lock. I walked past them, leaving the doors open behind me. They never try to leave—the fence is just to keep people out.

I unlocked the Plymouth and climbed inside. I pulled out the ashtray, toggling the off-on switch so that the ignition key would work. When I fired up the engine, it was like pulling a heavy layer of dusty burlap off a marble statue—the torque-monster Mopar crackled into life, hungry for asphalt.

I let it warm up for a minute, checking the oil-pressure gauge, while I got the steak smell off my hands with a few scented towelettes I took from the glove compartment. Then I eased the Plymouth through the opening in the fence, jumped out, and relocked the gate. The two bitch pits sat on their haunches, watching. The old stud was already lying down, sleeping off his lion’s share of the booty I’d brought.

I
wheeled the Plymouth up Canal, then worked my way over to Mama’s restaurant. I parked under the pristine white square with Max the Silent’s chop painted in its center. The calligraphy sensei who created it comes by and renews his masterpiece every so often, so it always looks new.

Even without all the security devices and the fact that it didn’t look worth stealing, I wouldn’t have been worried about anyone making a move on the Plymouth. In this part of the City, everybody knows Max’s sign.

A thug in a white kitchen apron let me in the back door. I’d seen him plenty of times before, but I didn’t know his name, and he didn’t care about mine.

I walked over to the bank of pay phones along the wall that separates the kitchen from the restaurant seating area. Mama still keeps a Mason jar there, filled to the brim with quarters. More than enough for a half-hour call to Taiwan, but AT&T won’t let you do that anymore—they want everyone to use one of their pre-paid phone cards. Once a monopoly . . .

I picked out a coin, slotted it through, and punched in a 718 number.

“Yes?”

“It’s me,” I said. “Can you and your father please meet me at the spot?”

“My father is not here now, mahn. But he will call soon. Shall I come by my—?”

“I need you both,” I told him.

“I understand, mahn. Do we need to bring—?”

“It’s not like that,” I said. “Not yet, anyway.”

“Sure,” Clarence said, hanging up.

I was reaching for more quarters when Mama appeared. Her round, ageless face was impassive under her perfectly coiffed hair. Her ceramic-black eyes were expressionless.

“Not visit?” she said, making a gesture with her jeweled hand to show me she wasn’t insulted that I hadn’t greeted her formally when I’d first come in.

“The Prof and Clarence are on their way over, Mama,” I said. “I have to reach out for Michelle now.”

“So—you want Max, yes?”

“Please,” I told her.

She nodded her head a fraction short of bowing, then turned and walked past me, heading toward the basement.

^“
I
f you don’t know what to do, and when to do it, you’ve already left
your
message,” the hard-honey voice on Michelle’s answering tape said.

“It’s me,” I said, after the beep. “It’s . . . six-oh-five in the afternoon. I’m going to be here in the church for a little while, but I can’t stay long. I need to see you. If I’m not here when you call, leave a way for me to get in touch with you, probably past midnight.”

I reached for more coins . . . then stopped. I walked around the wall, through the beaded curtain, and into the restaurant.

My booth, the one against the back wall, was empty, as always. So was the rest of the place. Occasionally, some tourists would ignore the filthy, fly-specked front window and wander inside. If the service didn’t send them packing, the food they were served would guarantee they’d never come back.

I sat down, glanced at my watch. Not like me to do that—patience is the one card I always keep in my deck.

Mama came through the kitchen, carrying a heavy white tureen on a tray with three matching bowls, slightly larger than cups. She placed the tray on the table, uncovered the tureen, and ladled out a bowl for me. Hot-and-sour soup—Mama’s personal creation. I bowed my thanks, took a sip. “Perfect,” I said.

At that, Mama sat down across from me, and helped herself to a bowl.

“Not work, right?” she asked me. To Mama, “work” could mean anything, from stealing to scamming to smuggling. What all of us did, one way or another. Our family doesn’t care about crap like genetics, but it’s got no room for citizens.

“Not work, Mama,” I said. “Trouble.”

“Trouble for you?”

“Not for me. Not for any of us. It’s Wolfe. She just got arrested.”

“Police girl?” Mama said, raising a sculpted eyebrow.

“Yeah. I don’t have any real facts yet. She’s supposed to have shot some guy.”

“Not kill?”

“Not . . . yet, anyway. He’s in a coma; they don’t know if he’s going to make it.”

“So how talk?”

“Supposedly, he talked
before
he went out, Mama. And he named Wolfe as the shooter.”

“You say not work.”

“
Not
work, right. Nobody hired me. There’s no money in this.”

“You and police girl . . . ?”

“It’s not that, either, Mama. Look, there’s no money in this,” I repeated. “Probably end up
costing
money, okay? Only, I’m doing it. And it doesn’t matter why.”

“Not to me, matter,” she said, shrugging to add emphasis to her lie. “You have more soup, okay?”

^“
I
’ve got to split,” I told Mama a short while later. “Over to the courthouse. When Max—”

“Max wait here for you?”

“No,” I said. Then I told her what I wanted him to do.

“Okay, sure,” she said. “Come when you . . . ?”

“When I light a cigarette. Now, listen, Mama. The Prof and Clarence will be here, too. I’m not sure when. They don’t have to actually stick around, just leave numbers with you where I can reach them later tonight, okay?”

“
Sure
okay. What you think?”

“Sorry, Mama. I’m just . . . edgy. See you later.”

N
ight Court never changes. Years ago, when I was trying to make a living as an off-the-books investigator, I sometimes worked the corridors. I was a hovering hawk, searching for marks to steer over to one of the lawyers I had a fee-splitting arrangement with.

First I’d convince the wife or the mother or the girlfriend—90 percent of the crowd was always women—that the guy being arraigned would fare much better with a “private” lawyer than Legal Aid. Not a hard sell. Then I’d find out how much cash they were carrying—none of the lawyers I shilled for would touch a check—and make the connection.

Whatever lawyer I was working with that night would stand up on the case, make a bail argument or a quick deal, then move on. None of that breed ever actually tried cases. Most of them didn’t even have an office, just a business card and a mail drop.

Anytime you have a steady stream of people being arraigned, you’ll find lawyers like that . . . and men like me trolling for prospects. In the Bronx, some of the fishermen speak Spanish. I heard, over in Queens, there’s one who’s fluent in Korean, and Brooklyn even has a guy who does it in Russian. All working for two-bit grifters with law licenses.

Those “arraignment only” lawyers take some of the caseload off Legal Aid’s back. And the judges like them fine too, because they never make trouble. Even most of the people who hire them go home happy, convinced they did the right thing by their loved ones. Another piece of the “system” you’ll never see on
Law and Order.

I moved through the crowd, looking for Davidson. Most of the people milling around had the dull, slightly anxious faces of cattle being herded down a chute, toward the sound of evenly spaced gunshots.

Davidson wasn’t in the hall. I pushed open the doors and walked into the courtroom. It was about half full; people sat distanced from one another, like they do in porno theaters. I didn’t recognize the judge on the bench, a dark-brown man with close-cropped gray hair.

I moved down the left side of the courtroom, looking for an aisle seat so I could scan without calling attention to myself.

A clot of gangbangers sat down front, eye-fucking everyone who looked their way. A young court officer, his short-sleeved white shirt tailored to show off impressive biceps, deliberately strolled by their area, playing his role.

A pair of whore lawyers were just over to my right. Those permanent-retainer lackeys spent every night pleading working girls to time served—usually two, three days—and paying their fines. They did volume business, representing the interests of a few pimps with good-sized stables of street girls. Higher-class hookers didn’t often get pinched. And when they did, whoever was running them would put real legal talent into the game.

A Spanish woman who looked like she’d just gotten off work—
hard
work—fingered a rosary. Waiting for them to bring her son out, I figured. A skinny, pasty-faced girl with barbell studs piercing her nose, eyebrow, and the top of one ear stared straight ahead, her face as bleak as her prospects.

A woman with a prominent black eye and swollen lip sat with her hands in her lap. Waiting to post bail for the guy who had beaten her up, my best guess.

A fat, sleekly dressed Chinese man was bracketed by two marble-eyed young guns, their leather fingertip jackets marking them as clearly as the tattoos under them.

A heavyset, weary-looking black woman held a sleeping baby on her lap.

A pair of guys in their thirties, dressed costly-casual, sprawled back in their seats, still glazed. I figured the one they were waiting for had been the driver.

I spotted a few press guys, sitting together. Way too many for a typical night arraignment. I was looking around for Hauser when Davidson came from the back, where the pens are, and headed for the door. I slipped out behind him.