Fanatics (11 page)

“You get her? His sister?”

“She disappeared, somewhere in Australia.”

“Just goes to show.”

“Show what?”

“Takes all kinds. You got some job, Officer. And I thought I met every type of weirdo there is. Like the creepy Blooms.”

1:24 P.M.

Azalea Butte appeared upset as she strode rapidly into the apartment house on the south side of East Eighty-Fourth Street.

“They got no right, none of them, picking on kids like that. I don't hold up with that kind of shit. I know what it means.”

They ascended in an elevator to the seventeenth floor.

Inside the apartment, a bird screamed, “Sheeeit! Sheeeit!”

“Hear it? Just like I said.”

“Sweeet ass! Sweeet ass!”

“Kiss mine,” Azalea said when they entered.

“Kiiiss mine! Kiiiss mine!”

The mynah birds were an excitable, unrelenting pair perched on separate swings in a large cage standing on the floor by a window in the living room, where the birds might catch glimpses of Central Park and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The cage was the only object in the room not covered by canvas drop cloths.

The furniture, draped and grouped in the center of the long room, loomed up large and ghost-like.

The wood paneling, formerly dark teak, was being replaced by light oak.

“New wood,” Azalea said. “The whole seven-room apartment, including the kitchen, one room at a time. And all new furniture to match. Even the frames for the paintings, everything to match. Their choice, not mine. But it's their dough and they got pots of it. What are you laughing at?”

“Those birds.”

“Yo, big tits! Yo, big tits!
”

Azalea laughed. “Shut up, birds, or I'll twist your heads off. Sure you're not hungry, Officer? They got a big fridge here, lots of healthy food.”

“I'm a cop, Azalea. I can't steal.”

“Food ain't stealing, not when you're hungry. Not from the Blooms. C'mon, let's get out of this place, then, everything looks okay here anyway. Let's go. This joint's a bore. But wait a minute, you know what else they got? They got videos of them and the gym kids. And Ballz, too, I bet. Secret stuff. In fact, I know they got them with Ballz. I bagged some for him, just in case he ever needed something to keep them in line. The Blooms, I mean. Boy, was he pissed off at them. He wanted me to go nose around again and grab all the ones with him on, to keep the Blooms off his back, you know, blackmail and so on. But now it won't matter, not now he's dead. Or maybe the Blooms will try and sell them anyway. Still, there might be something on the videos for you.”

“Might be, although I'm not in my bailiwick here. And I don't have a search warrant. Still I'll pass the info along.”

“Just don't tell anyone I sent you, okay? Tell them anything, but don't tell them that. It would kill my business. But Ballz, he was a genius no matter what happened, he'd figure out a way to cash in, to write stuff into his music, stuff he learned about people like the Blooms and so on. That way he'd let people know all what he knew about them, you get my meaning? Ballz wasted nothing. Everything, absolutely everything went into the Ballz Busta moneymaking machine. He was a totally focused man, a real craftsperson at making money. And he wasn't shy about showing off his success neither, that's part of the whole formula. Whoever killed him, they must've ripped him off but good.”

“No, nothing was stolen. Not as far as we can tell.”

“Go on. Kill him and not take nothing? I don't believe it. Makes no sense. Look, you know what, I know where we can go right now nearby here. A nice quiet place and I can get something to wash down my vitamins with. C'mon, this Bloom place is too creepy.”

1:42 P.M.

Outside, rainfall had redoubled with a vengeance and the wind was picking up, a mix that made the Manhattan air look like a smithereening mirror.

The two women half-ran down to Park Avenue with nor'wester gusts pushing at their backs.

“You a Catholic?” Azalea said.

“Why?”

“Thought so. Irish. C'mon up here with me. I don't like going in alone, I'm not Catholic.”

Here was the Church of Saint Ignatius Loyola, a block-wide edifice, undistinguished architecture, murky interior, red candles flickering in the gloom. An oversized and faux-ancient structure, flashes of glittery gold galore.

Someone was practicing on the organ, short bursts of low rumbles and high-pitched toots.

Azalea Butte walked straight up the main aisle and Flo followed her.

At the polished brass communion rail on the center of the steps below the towering altar—a gold-encrusted white marble confection—they knelt.

An odor of incense and candle wax surrounded them.

“I took Ballz here once,” Azalea whispered. “He loved all that gold and the high cross but didn't care much for the statues, said they looked all bogus with way too much blood on them, and everything all bigged up.”

From her shoulder satchel, Azalea Butte extracted a strand of gold rosary beads. “Don't laugh,” she said. “Ballz gave them to me for my last birthday. Genuine antique from Spain. I don't really know how to use them, but I try.”

Azalea fingered the beads and her lips moved. Flo could just about follow her soft murmuring. “Please, Mother Mary, remember my momma. And take care of my daddy. Yeah, him, too, wherever he is. And now please look after Bal—Mr. Busta and his family, especially those three sweet little kids he left behind. And most of all, help my detective friend here find the son of a—that person who did it.” She paused and glanced at Flo. “You praying?”

“Yes. That no one else gets killed.”

“That's good. We need all the help we can grab in this world.” She held Flo's hand. “Help all the poor people, Mother Mary, and please remember…”

She named more people, her voice too low to be heard, and her whispers and Flo's silent prayers melded in a strange way into the sound of the organ, growing and spreading as in a font slowly filling with drops of water, until a rich deep sorrow overflowed and saturated the pair of women kneeling before the altar.

Prayers finished, they walked back out in silence to Park Avenue, and through blustery squalls struggled across the wide boulevard and down East Eighty-Fourth Street.

1:51 P.M.

A gray, wet, and numbing void had them both thinking about appetites still unsatisfied.

“Now I'm starved,” Azalea said. “I got to drink something with these vitamins. How about here, this place looks nice.”

This place was a saloon. The Penguin Lounge. The proprietor, a spry, balding little man, was busily arranging fresh-cut flowers in a Thanksgiving harvest decoration in front of a mirror behind a long mahogany bar.

The lounge was a classy-looking establishment with a solid air, and the elderly bartender looked as if he'd been serving tipplers in this toney neighborhood since Prohibition's repeal.

His name was Jackie Fitz, and he'd been serving Azalea Butte almost since the day she arrived in New York at age fifteen.

“This is where I first met Ballz. It was Saint Patrick's Day, right after the parade, and a crew of drunken firemen brought me here. They weren't too happy about finding Ballz in the place, a black man, until he picked up the tab for the whole house, thousands and thousands of dollars. Then he could've sung ‘Did Your Mother Come from Ireland?' and they'd have kissed, not kicked, his colored ass. He'd flirt with that kind of danger too many times. I think it gave him a thrill, rough trade and all that. But I would think, boy oh boy, kiddo, you're losing your marbles, you got your brains running out your ears messing with characters like this. Irish wiseguys, sometimes even Italian, and I mean the worst kind of bigots. But Ballz had the mouth, and he had the money, and if he couldn't bullshit his way out, he'd buy it.”

“This isn't getting any simpler,” Flo said. “Excuse me.” Flo's cell phone was buzzing. “Frank, where are you?”

“With the senator. We just left a church.”

“Me, too. It's catching. How many were you?”

“Four patrolmen and me,” Frank said. “Three cars. No media. A surprise drop-in on a mothers-to-be group.”

“Where?”

“Bed-Stuy.”

“Maybe keep him out of there. Those are his people, too obvious he'd be with them. This'll get out, exactly where he's been.”

“He'll be pissed if he can't go where they love him. He was good, too, he listens more than he talks. Lookit, Flo, we're heading back to his place now. My wife's come over there, helping his wife with supper.”

“God help us. A shoestring operation. Catch you later, Frank.”

“You look awful,” Azalea said. “You're not glad you stuck with me? You can never tell, you know, what might pop up. Anything.” Azalea turned to the bartender. “Bottle of bubbly, Jackie, good and cold. And have some yourself, please. Just give Princess Di her usual.”

Princess Di was the bartender's white toy poodle, keeping her owner company behind the bar. Jackie Fitz poured a bottle of lemon-flavored Perrier into a bowl for Princess Di and popped open a bottle of Roederer Cristal. He set three champagne flutes on the bar. “Just a splash for you, Detective,” Jackie said. “I know you're on duty.”

Azalea Butte sat astride her red leather bar stool as if born to the manners of classy saloons like the Penguin Lounge. She produced a yellow vitamin pill, and swallowed it with a long draft of bubbly. Relieved exhalation.

“Jeez, Azalea,” Jackie said, a sad smile creasing his face, his bony, liver-spotted hand enclosing hers. “I'm really sorry about your friend there. What a terrible thing. I read all about it in the
Post
. They weren't very complimentary toward Mr. Busta. And what they said there about the cops—”

“Careful, she's investigating it.”

“My late wife was a cop, God rest her soul, over on the other side of the park she worked. Family fights break out and they'd always call her in. She didn't do murders, though, if they started killing each other. You're with homicide?”

“Brooklyn.”

“And a lieutenant,” Azalea said.

“Look,” Jackie said. “Any way I can help, Lieutenant, you just ask. For my wife's sake, if nothing else. She's out in Calvary now over twenty years, waiting for me. And I got my place there, too, right next to her. Maureen Shea Fitz. A quarter century on the force. So what can I tell you, Lieutenant, about Mr. Busta? I only want to help.”

“Did he come in here often?”

“He wasn't a regular, if that's what you mean. When he was in the neighborhood, he'd just drop by. Always stood the whole house. A very popular guy, of course. I don't know who'd want to do something like this to him. Unless it was a robber.”

“Everybody liked him? Never got in any arguments, any fights?”

“Not in here, not really. Out there maybe, out on the sidewalk. Once or twice, I think. Guys would recognize him and go wise-mouthing, hoping to start something. Show off for their girlfriends, that kind of stuff.”

“Any weapons? Anyone ever get hurt?”

“They didn't come in here, if they did. I run a quiet place. I give to the Patrolmen's Benevolent Association, Sergeants Benevolent Association, Detectives' Endowment Association. But you know, Lieutenant, a guy like Mr. Busta, rich, famous, not shy, a guy like him attracts envy. Other guys want to challenge him. Maybe it was something like that, if it wasn't just your ordinary robbery situation. Straight-out envy.”

“Anyone he got into arguments with here, would you recognize them?”

“Hard to say. People come, people go. But maybe you find someone, I might remember a face. I'm pretty good on faces. Just ask me. I'm always here. Until I move out to Calvary.”

“You've been very helpful, Mr. Fitz. And thanks for the champagne, Azalea, and the tour. But I got to run, it's getting late. I'll see you both again soon, okay? There'll be more questions.”

“One for the road, Lieutenant, a short one. You, too.” Jackie refilled their glasses.

“What was that song?” Azalea said. “The one you and Ballz used to sing.”

“Yeah, he got a kick out of that, didn't he? Irish rap, he called it.” Jackie began singing, his voice low and gruff, a slow tempo at odds with the cheeky lyrics, a pace closer to a funeral dirge than a hip-hop number…

Ireland was Ireland,

When England was a pup.

Ireland was Ireland,

'Fore England she grew up.

And any limey son of a bitch,

Wot doesn't like me sass,

Can pucker up his limey lips

And kiss me Irish ass.

2:41 P.M.

As Flo left the Penguin Lounge, she smiled.

She hadn't heard the tavern rebels' ditty since her grandfather died at age ninety-one.

She walked fast toward the subway at Eighty-sixth and Lex, not simply because the air was cold with that damp sea mistiness of a soggy New York November, but because she hoped the exercise would so exhaust her, she'd doze off into a dreamless snooze as soon as she found a seat on the train and settled in for the ride back to downtown Brooklyn. Quicker than a car, the subway.

And she did snooze, but it wasn't dreamless.

Her head was spinning, the effect of champagne on an empty stomach, topped up by the full force of the witches' brew thickening her brain, the cauldron's mix grown more potent with the day's fresh ingredients.

Gym pickups and hedge-fund gamblers.

Manly magazines and cock-of-the-roost challengers.

More money laundering and murkier businesses to stash dirty cash.

And for that final dash of spice, the hottest touch of Tabasco, the unlikeliest but most vengeful of players, hizonnah da mare, Flo's maximum commander, the mayor himself a noontime lover boy, cross-dressing competitor with Mr. Busta for a Wall Street mistress's favors.