Hard Candy (12 page)

73

T
HERE WAS nobody I could ask. Elvira was partly right. Candy wasn't a whore. Not a real stand–up, pussy–for–cash whore. I knew one once. Never knew her real name. Everybody called her Mercy. She said she got into the business when she mercy–fucked some poor shlub and he bought her a pearl necklace. She was maybe forty years old. An old lady to me then. "It's show business," she told me. "Mind games. Mystery. There's no old whores, honey. Flesh sags. But money earns interest."

I was sitting in her kitchen, sunlight washing the room. Watching her drink her coffee, listening to her story. Even then, I knew how to listen.

"I just want somebody to talk to him," she said, her voice husky and soft. Thick hair pulled back from her face, held there with a rubber band. Cigarette in her long fingers. A housewife in the morning.

"What do I say?"

"Whatever works. He's an old trick—I've been dating him for years. The difference between a good
whore
and just an experienced one is repeat customers. Now he wants an exclusive, you understand? He wants me to move into an apartment in this building he owns. Be there when he shows up. Hold dinner for him."

I shrugged. "It doesn't sound so bad to me. One trick instead of a lot of tricks. And he'd pay the same?"

"Sure. But when he changes his mind, I'm out. I don't have a pimp—I don't want an owner." She walked over to the sink, her hips churning under the faded bathrobe. Washed out her coffee cup, talking at me over her shoulder. Patted herself on the butt. "This is mine. I rent it out—it's not for sale. Money lubricates me—it doesn't own me."

"You told him?"

"I'm his toy. I do what he wants. It's not inside his head that a toy makes up its own mind. He thought he was my dream coming true."

"I'll fix it," I told her.

When I went back to see her, she had the money ready for me. "He called me," she said. "He won't be coming back."

"That's what you wanted, right?"

"One of my tricks is a champion bridge player. You know how to play?"

I nodded. I knew how to play chess too. And dominoes. Prison.

"This trick, he told me any game you play with a partner, there's a difference between the best result possible and the best possible result. You understand?"

"What I did … it was the best result possible, right?"

"Yeah." She kissed me on the cheek. "You're a good man. Solid, keep your word. I thought they didn't make them like you anymore. In a few years, you ever get to Phoenix, you look me up, okay?"

"Phoenix?"

"I'm buying a little motel out near there. My retirement. Been saving for years. You get too old, the mystery wears thin…it gets too hard to do the act."

"You'll never be too old, Mercy."

Her smile mocked my lie. She kissed me again. Goodbye.

Candy was a different breed. That didn't mean her little daughter wasn't a liar too.

74

I
FELL ASLEEP in my office later. On the couch, the little TV set flickering at the edge of my consciousness, Pansy snoring on the floor next to me. When I woke up it was dark again. A piece of light sat like a candle flame in the corner of the room, reflected from someplace past the window. I didn't move, watching it, letting it take me. Splitting off from this mess, disassociating. It works sometimes—you let go, it comes to you. But only if it's out there.

No use asking questions if you don't care what the answer is.

The cops wouldn't just walk away, but they'd find something else to do.

I blew smoke at the ceiling, wondering if I would.

75

T
HE NEXT morning, I grabbed a tip sheet from the newsstand and went back to the office. None of the horses spoke to me. I didn't dream about having one of my own one day—the way I used to all the time.

I spent a lot of time thinking about who I could steal from next.

76

I
DRIFTED BACK to Mama's. White dragons in the window. She told the waiter something. He brought me a plate of fried rice, beef in oyster sauce. No soup.

"Everything okay now?" she asked, leaning forward, watching.

"Sure."

"You wait for something?"

"You mean…here?"

"No. For
something
, okay?"

"I don't think so."

"I think so."

I didn't answer her. After a while, she went back to the cash register at the front.

I was walking out when the pay phone rang. Mama walked past me. I waited.

"Man say tell you watch the papers tomorrow. Sutton Place."

"Anything else?"

"No."

"He say his name?"

"Man who called before. One time. Dead–man sound when he talk."

77

I
WAS AT the restaurant before it opened the next day. Mama brought me the four–star edition of the
Daily
News
. They put it out on the street by six in Chinatown. I didn't have to search through it. The headline screamed "Bizarre Murder on Sutton Place." A socialite with a WASP name was found murdered by her Wall Street husband when he came home from work around nine o'clock last night. Her name didn't mean anything to me. The newspaper account was short on facts—long on adjectives: grisly, ritualistic, satanic. Hinting at things that only come out on evil nights.

It was too early to call any of the free–lance reporters I know, but I had another solid contact in the press: a West Indian who worked the streets for one of the tabloids. Worked them hard. He'd lost his Island accent somewhere between Newark and journalism school but he was a hard–core risk–taker. He might be on the job.

I found a pay phone on the West Side. I got the reporter's answering machine. "If you know who you're calling, you know what you want to say. Do it when you hear the beep and I'll get back to you."

I heard the beep. "Leave me a message," I said into the recorder.

78

I
GOT OFF the street before the citizens took over the city. Let Pansy out to her roof. Gave her some of the food I'd brought back from Mama's. Felt her pleasure as she lit into it, her sadness when it was gone. In another couple of minutes, she forgot about both feelings, back to herself. Lucky dog.

Maybe I'd go away for a while. Cruise out to Indiana, visit my old cellmate Virgil. His daughter was almost ten and I'd never seen her.

I could always see Virgil's daughter.

79

"A
NYTHING?" I asked Mama when I called her from the street late that afternoon.

"Come in, okay?"

Max was in the kitchen when I walked in through the back door. He followed me out to my table. Mama sat down next to him, facing me.

"Man call. Black man, sunny voice. Call him at home, seven o'clock tonight."

"That's it?"

Mama's smooth face never changed expression. "Dead man called. Said call him. Hangs up."

I waited.

"Man say his name is Julio. You know him. You call him at his club, okay?"

Julio. Fuck!

"Girl call too. Same girl. Say to call her too. Very important."

"Okay."

"Not okay. Take Max with you."

"To make phone calls?"

"Meetings, yes? All these people?"

"Maybe. Maybe not."

"Take Max."

80

T
HE BASEMENT under Max's warehouse has a tunnel we cut through to the building next door. Some architects own it. I stepped into their basement, flashing the pencil–beam before my feet. Empty, like always. I hooked the field phone into their lines with the alligator clips. Julio first.

The beef–brain who answered took his time understanding I wasn't going to talk to him first. Julio got on the line, the old alligator's voice down to a whisper.

"I want to meet you."

"Take Marcy Avenue all the way until it hits the bridge that crosses the BQE. Seven–fifteen, okay?"

"Why don't you come here?"

"I don't have time."

"You should make time."

"Take it or leave it," I told him, cutting the line.

81

I
RANG THE number Wesley gave me, using the code. Three times. Again. Then Candy. She answered on the first ring.

"What do you want?" I asked her.

"To see you."

"Tell me."

"I'll tell you whatever you want to hear. You know that. There's trouble for you. I can help. You believe me?"

"No."

"Come anyway. Listen for a few minutes."

"I'll come tomorrow. Don't be cute. Don't be stupid."

"The only thing I'll be is here."

82

W
E CROSSED the Brooklyn Bridge to Tillary Street, left to Flushing Avenue. Ran parallel to the highway through Williamsburg. The sidewalk was thick with dark–eyed girls. Young Jewish beauties from the Hebrew high school in Williamsburg. Walking in tight clumps, chattering like sweet birds. All the brightness was in their faces—their clothes were too old for the way their hair bounced at the base of their necks, the way their eyes snapped at life. Mothers wheeled babies in strollers. Hassidim with their black stove–pipe hats and long coats covered ground with purposeful steps. Laughter was for children. Hebrew writing on the walls, iron bars over the windows. Occupied territory, carved out of other ghettos on all sides.

We hadn't walked a block before we picked up cover. Half a dozen men, plain white shirts, dark suspenders, yarmulkes on their heads. Hands in their pockets. One had a coat over his forearm. Israeli soldiers—different uniforms. A clot of young girls passed us, demure but fearless. They were used to strangers.

The group of men watched me as I dialed the pay phone, not making a secret of it. The reporter was waiting for the call.

"Morehouse here."

"You know my voice?"

"Sure."

"You working on anything?"

"Lots of things, man. This a social call?"

"Maybe a trade. You know the shelter by the meat market?"

"Sure."

"Two o'clock coming. On the far corner?"

"Sure."

83

T
HE CADILLAC SEDAN stopped on the east side of the short bridge. The old man stepped out of the back. His driver opened the door, stood outside, watching. The pack watched him. I leaned against the stone wall, Max between me and the west side entrance. Traffic rumbled underneath us—tail end of the rush hour.

I let him come to me.

"Who's this?" he snarled, tilting his head at Max.

"What d'you want, Julio?"

"I want to know who this is."

"Fuck you."

"Burke, don't play with me. You got a pass. One time. You know why. Nobody gets two."

"Save it for the Godfather movies, old man. You don't need to know who this is. You had any brains, you'd already know."

"Why's he here?"

"To memorize your face, okay? So don't threaten me."

Max stood as stony as the wall, eyes slitted on Julio. Camera lenses. The old man's driver put his hand in his pocket, restless.

"Tell him to stay where he is, Julio. My brother wants to hurt somebody bad, and you'll do. That guido driving your car, he comes out with a piece and the Jews make him into chopped liver. Look for yourself."

Julio waved his hand as if he'd just seen an old friend. His driver took out a cigarette, kept his hands in sight. The street was empty like it was four in the morning. Except for the pack. One of them walked over to the same pay phone I'd used. Picked up the receiver.

"We can't stay here long," I told Julio.

He took a breath. "Last night, he hit Torenelli's daughter."

"What?"

"On Sutton Place. That was the don's daughter. She broke away from the family. Years ago. Married a citizen. Gives parties to raise money for the homeless, lives in a two–million–dollar co–op, okay?"

"So?"

He moved in close to me, prison–yard whisper cutting, hands shaking. "The husband, he comes home, finds her on the bed. Staked out like a piece of beef, wrists and ankles wired to the corners. With her head chopped off.
Off
! He shoved the head between her legs, you understand? So her face was looking at the husband when he comes in the door."

"Who?"

"Wesley. Who the fuck else? Who else would do that?"

"A freak."

"Sure. A freak who can get past the security in that joint. A freak that don't leave a lousy fingerprint. Not a trace. It was a pro hit. The fucking detectives threw up just looking at it. The husband—he's in a rubber room."

"What's this got to do with me?"

"It's Wesley's work. A fucking message, right? The don said he wasn't going to pay that maniac. He didn't do the job—he don't get paid. Wesley, he says he don't get paid, he's coming for all of us. Crazy motherfucker. He's a hitter. A contract man. He don't tell
us
, we tell
him
. Now he has to go. We can keep the sicko stuff outta the papers for only so long."

The old man tried to fire up one of his twisted black cigars. He couldn't get it lit—it wasn't the wind. I cracked a wooden match in my palm, held the cup for him. He leaned close to take the flame. A sour smell came off him.

"This ain't the first one. He dropped one of the don's boys. One shot, right in the back of the neck. Calls up, says, 'One down.' Like he's going to pick us off one at a time."

"Do whatever you want."

"No, it don't play like that.
You
started this fucking mess, you clean it up,
capisce
?"

"
I
started it? Where d'you get that? You got things mixed up. Wesley just wants his money, right?"

"He was up front with us, we woulda done that, okay? That Mortay—we know Wesley didn't hit him. But there was another guy— one of Sally Lou's boys. Our inside man. To watch Mortay. We had it all wired. The way we got it, you had a meet with Mortay in a playground in Chelsea." His deep–set eyes turned up to watch mine. Waited a beat, went on. "Our guy was along for backup. And
he
gets dropped. From the rooftop. Sniper shot. Somebody working with a silencer and a night scope. That's the murder the cops want you for…that's what they busted you on, right?"

It wasn't McGowan or Morales who made that bust. They wouldn't have squawked to the other cops anyway. I felt the gears mesh. The city has a compost heap for a heart—why shouldn't gangsters drop a dime on it—maybe grow some dollars?

"I wasn't there," I said quietly. "The judge cut me loose."

"Yeah, you wasn't there. Okay, I'm easy. But it was Wesley on that roof. Nobody else works like that…like a fucking hillbilly in the mountains. That puts you and that maniac together."

I watched him, waiting.

"It's good enough for the don," Julio said.

"Why don't you just pay Wesley the money?"

"Now you got it. That's exactly what we're gonna do, pal. And you're gonna deliver it."

"No thanks. I don't do crossfires."

"You gonna do this one. You don't, the don says to tell you you're on his list too."

"Why? What difference does it make?"

"You think…after what that fuck did…you think the don's gonna be happy just seeing him dead? He gets his hands on Wesley, it's gonna take that
animale
a week to die."

"I'm not meeting Wesley to hand over money—he'd waste the errand boy—you know that."

An alligator's smile. "I told them…Burke's too slick to play the chump. We don't care how it's done. We gotta have Wesley. Do whatever you gotta do. But quick."

"I'll get back to you."

"Don't even think about hiding. There's no place you can go in this town. One phone call and you're locked up again. You know what it costs to have a man hit in jail today?"

"You mean one
more
phone call, don't you?" I said, so close to his face I could see the pores. "Goodbye, old man."

The pack watched him walk to his car. Watched it drive away. Watched me use the pay phone again. Mama's voice was soft and clear. "He called. Say, same time, same place. Tonight."

Max and I walked back to the Plymouth. One of the young men in the pack caught my eye. I got the message. Don't. Come. Back.

I'd heard it before.