Sharky's Machine (7 page)

‘Of course. I guess it really isn’t fair to say we don’t love each other. I love Donald. And I love you.’

‘You love power, my dear. It is your passion.’

‘Maybe I’m just turned off by the lack of it.’

‘My point is, after Monday night you will become a luxury Donald can no longer afford.’

A half-smile played briefly over her face.

‘You know I’m really surprised that you’re sharing the spotlight of your beloved Pachinko! — even with the next president of the United States.’

DeLaroza looked away from her. She was quite astute. Pachinko! was DeLaroza’s grandest achievement, an amusement park like no other in the world. It had taken years to conceive and build it. But Donald Hotchins’s announcement at the opening of the park was part of his plan. Even Domino was part of it. DeLaroza did nothing without a plan. He finally waved a hand in the air.

‘It will be a delicate situation,’ he said. ‘I hope you can handle it. I admit if anyone can, you can. But the Chinese have a saying: The peacock should not strut when the tiger is about. There will be many tigers about, waiting for him to make a mistake so they can devour him. It could destroy him.’

‘Then I’ll have to be very clever.’

‘You can be that.’

‘I’m sorry. Am I hurting you? I wouldn’t hurt you.’

‘Of course not. I know you would never hurt anyone knowingly. It is just that I seem to have — how do you say it?

— bit off my nose?’

‘Cut off my nose to spite my face, It’s a stupid saying.’

‘Yes, but true. I will not see you again, will I? That is what you are really saying to me, is it not-?’

‘Of course I’ll see you. We’ll all be good friends.’

‘Not business acquaintances.’

The remark stunned her, as if he had slapped her. ‘Is that what it’s been to you?’ she said. ‘I hoped it was more than just business. You’re very special to me. Don’t you know that?’

He watched the smoke curl towards the ceiling, swirling in and out of the pools of light from the recessed lamps. ‘Yes,’ he said finally, ‘I do.’ She reached out and touched his hand with her fingertips. ‘You are quite something,’ he said. ‘You have what we call in Brazil beleza inexplicada. A quality that cannot be described.’

‘Thank you.’

‘Does he know about you? All about you?’

‘No. Is that really necessary?’

He shook his head. ‘But if he should find out?’

‘Someday I’ll explain it all to him.’

‘No, no, you will not, my love. It is a thing you will never be able to do. But that is your problem.’ Then: ‘So this meeting was all for talk, eh? Conversation. I will be disappointed this last time.’

She moved closer to him, so close he could feel her warmth. She leaned over him and her breasts touched his chest. She brushed her lips across his eyelids. It made him tremble.

‘No,’ she said. ‘You’re very special to me. You’ve been very good to me and I know what makes you happy, Victor. I want our last private meeting together to make you happier than you’ve ever been before. A very special night. Tonight you will come to my apartment at eight o’clock and I’ll give you your farewell present, mui bita?’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I understand.’ He sighed, staring at her open blouse, at the tinted edges of her nipples, feeling her perfume hypnotizing his senses. Her fingers moved lightly across his neck and drew his head to her, his cheek against her breast.

‘And why are we waiting until tonight?’ he asked, his voice trembling.

‘Because,’ she said, and her voice was a husky, inviting, ageless whisper, ‘I want you to think about it. All day long. It will be much sweeter that way.’

He closed his eyes, turning his head so her dress fell away from her breast, and he was tasting the tartness of her hardened nipple.

‘You are a masterpiece,’ he whispered. ‘On Ipanema, you would steal the beach away from the sea.’

‘You should have been a poet, Victor,’ she said softly. ‘You are a poet, my dear.’ But even at that moment the old fear crawled back inside him again and the horror of what had to be done was like an angry voice hissing in his ear. And he could not ignore it.

Chapter Four

The
Vice Squad was located deep in the bowels of the
main station house, a windowless, airless, cramped, messy space hardly big enough to accommodate the sixteen men who called it home. It was a forgotten hole, away from normal traffic, a place nobody bad to pass or see or contend with. Prison-grey pipes rattled overhead. The place was too hot in the winter and frigid in the summer.

Barney Friscoe sat in a closet of an office, a short, chunky lieutenant with eternal five o’clock shadow and thinning brown hair, dressed in chinos, Adidas, a Wings Over America tee-shirt, and a yellow windbreaker. His cluttered desk looked like a combat zone. As Sharky entered the cubbyhole, he stood up, peering over the reading glasses that were perched halfway down his nose and smiling in a row of crooked, off-colour teeth. He offered Sharky a hairy paw.

‘Welcome to Friscoe’s Inferno,’ he said. ‘You’re Sharky, right? One o’clock, right on time. I hardly recognize you without all that hair on your face. Grab a chair there, throw that shit on the floor. You had lunch?’

Sharky shook his head, nodded yes to the question, and moved a pile of debris from one of the two battered chairs in the small room.

‘Jesus,’ Sharky said, ‘what’d you do to deserve this?

‘Dirtiest digs for the dirtiest squad. Oh, well, nobody gives a shit. We don’t spend any time around here anyhow.’ He waved outside the office at the bullpen where half a dozen desks were jammed together in a space hardly big enough for four. On the corner of one was an antiquated coffeemaker. Sugar and powdered milk formed pools around it and a dirty communal spoon lay forgotten nearby.

There were two men in the outer office. One of them, a hard-looking black man in his forties with a deep scar over his left eye and streaks Of grey in his tight-cropped afro, wore a tan corduroy three-piece suit. The vest was open and his tie was pulled down to his collarbone. He stared coldly at Sharky then turned back to a battered Royal typewriter and began pecking out a report with two fingers. The other, an older man built like a refrigerator, was on the phone.

‘That’s Livingston and Papadopolis out there,’ Friscoe said. ‘Livingston’s the one with the tan.’

‘He got something against me?’ Sharky asked.

‘Not that I know of,’ Friscoe said. ‘The Bat sent your sheet down. Looks like you got the shit stick handed to you. That was a nice machine you had workin’ there until that dimwit Tully fucked it up for you. He was down here a while. You cut off his head, he wouldn’t be any dumber than he is with it on.’

‘I’ve been told to forget it.’

‘Probably the best thing to do. What’s gonna happen with Tully, Tully’s gonna end with his toes up one of these days. He’s too stupid to stay alive. It’s still tough, y’know. Nobody likes to take the gas pipe when they been workin’ a thing as long as you were. Anyways, I got something down here you can maybe get your dick into. So far what we got is odds and ends, see? Nothing ties together yet. But it’s lookin’ pretty good. Here and there.’

‘You’re a little vague,’ Sharky said.

‘Paranoid,’ Friscoe said.

‘Oh,’ Sharky said and laughed at Friscoe’s candour.

‘What it is, every once in a while one of my boys turns up something sounds interesting. Not the usual stink finger, hands-up bulishit but something maybe we can make a little mileage outa. What happens, I don’t wanna give anything away, see what I mean? What I don’t want, 1 don’t want Homicide or Bunco or some lace dolie outfit workin’ special for the chief stealin’ my melons, okay? Fuck that skit. I figure it starts here, I wanna keep it here. The other thing, I don’t make a habit, see, of goin’ down to the DA with my dick in my hand. Unless we make a heavy case, we don’t nail it down, I flush it. We got a machine goin’ and we can’t put it together, it goes down the toilet.’

He slurped coffee and kept talking. Sharky found himself breathing for him.

‘Just so’s you know the territory down here, let me tell you, here’s how I feel about Vice. I got sixteen years in, almost seventeen. I been on foot in the boondocks. Did a two-year trick in a blue-and-white. Had one partner snuffed out from under me and another one, he tried to drive through a warehouse wall, ended up in a wheelchair. I got out lucky with a bad back. I been in Bunco, six years in Robbery, I did a short tour in Homicide and I was in the IA for about two minutes before I ended up here.’

Sharky laughed. He could just see Friscoe in Internal Affairs in his sneakers and sweatshirt, investigating complaints against his fellow officers.

‘Internal Affairs,’ Friscoe went on, ‘I told ‘em to stuff it. I got to deal with snitches every day. I’ll be damned if I’m gonna snitch on my own, see what I mean?’

Sharky nodded. There was a rumour you could not even be interviewed for the IA unless you’d been born out of wedlock.

‘Anyways, I personally don’t give a rat’s ass what the public does,’ Friscoe growled. ‘Some guy wants to stick his dick in a coffee grinder, who am I to argue, okay? It’s his dick. Personally I got better things to do. I could care less some shirt salesman from Dubuque comes inta town, wants to pay out fifty, a hundred bucks to get laid, get a little head, shit, why not? Live and let live, I say, but it’s where they put you. The Bat, the commissioner, the chief, whoever puts you where you are. Like I say, I got almost seventeen in, so I don’t growl too loud. Mainly we got misdemeanours down here. Hooking. Pandering. Freak show. It takes a lotta time, effort, to make a misdemeanour case, okay? I mean, nobody’s sucker enough if he pays some chippie fifty to gobble his pork, he’s gonna show up in court and testify against her. He’s gonna head for the hills first.’

‘So what’s the answer?’ Sharky asked.

‘So we make a case against somebody for trickin’ it’s gotta be the cop makin’ it and that means he had to make a deal and money has to change hands. What we really look for is felony. Extortion. A and B. Juvenile crimes. The worst. But it’s rare. Mostly what we do, we answer complaints and do what we can to keep the streets clean. If we get a handle on something good, it’s gravy on the potatoes. You want some mud? It’s strong enough to play fullback for the Falcons.’

‘No thanks.’

‘Another thing. We got that fuckin’ DA Hanson comin’ up for re-election so he’s got all the Baptists, the bluenoses, Billy Grahamers tired up right now. . . . The schmuck hasn’t done anything but indict homos and jack-off artists for two years, but he’s makin’ a lot of noise right now so he’ll look good to the PTA, that kinda shit. To listen to him, see, you’d think you can’t take a breath of fresh air downtown without gettin’ the clap.’

Sharky broke up again, but Friscoe went right on, ignoring the laughter.

‘Anyways Hanson is keepin’ me busy just on routine, shakin’ up the ladies on the street, bustin’ the massage parlours, movie pits, hourly hotels. What I want, see, I want to zero you in on this thing we got a handle on, let you loose, see what you can do. 1 give you Arch — that’s Livingston — and Papa and anybody you can dog-rob outa some other department. That’s your whole army.’

Sharky nodded. ‘I’ve heard stories about both of them.’

‘Whaddya hear, good or bad?’ Friscoe asked.

‘Both. Depends on who you listen to. The guys I listen to say they’re in sudden death playoff with the best there is.’

Friscoe beamed, obviously pleased. ‘Livingston there, he’s got thirteen in. Best goddamn street cop in the House. He’s cautious but lotsa smarts upstairs, right? College guy like you. Papadopolis, a hell of a cop. Papa doesn’t give a shit. He’ll stake out the governor’s toilet you tell him to. Been shot three times; don’t even remember where the scars are. And that’s your machine. Oh yeah, one other thing. You gotta understand the politics of the House, see. All of us down here, in the cesspool here, we either don’t know the politics, see, or didn’t give a shit. Or maybe what it was, we were too hard-headed. That’s what happens, you don’t suck ass, play by the book, all that shit, you end up down here in the fuckin’ leper colony. I been hearin’ about you, the last two, three years. The word’s been around the department head’s on you, okay? Some say you’re a hardhead. Others say you’re dynamite on the Street. Thing is, r give you maybe three, four years, you’ll walk.’

‘To where? I’ll have eight years in. Where the hell do you go after sinking that much time in the cops?’

‘I dunno, but y’see, Sharky, you’re too goddamn contrary to suck up to the system and too smart to live in it. I heard this morning, from this buddy of mine in IA, he calls me before I got a cup of coffee in mc, tells me The Bat’s getting ready to flop you out of detectives and give you a six-and-six. Even upstairs they figure you got a raw deal. I mean, the way I look at it, what do they want? Maybe you should’ve given the creep a ticket to Detroit and cab fare to the fuckin’ airport, right? So I go up to see Jaspers and I tell him I gotta have some help and could I have you since I heard he was bustin’ you outa the narcs. The Bat thinks it over a minute or two and finally says, “Okay, but tell him to keep out of my hair.” And then he says something real strange. He says, “Tell him to keep his shoes on in my office.” What the fuck was that all about?’

‘My foot itched.’

‘And you took off your shoe and scratched it, that it?’

‘Right.’

‘Bad form. Very bad form. You gotta understand about The Brat, about them all. Shit, look, it’s a lotta fuckin’ crap protocol up there, see? That’s what I’m talkin’ about. You’re a third- or second-grade detective, you’re a maggot to them. Takin’ off’ your shoe, that makes sense to you, but to a creep like The Bat, it’s death warmed over. That’s what I mean, I see you walkin’ a coupla years from now. You gotta roll along and take the punches, let the big shots grab the big collars, keep your face off the front page, don’t make waves. That kind of thing. Otherwise what happens, you end up down here. Me, I should give a shit. Two years I make captain, probably get assistant in charge of Criminal Investigation, some nice job to go out on. Another two years I take my retirement and fuck it. But you, you’re gonna kick ass a lot and get kicked a lot. It’s what always happens you got a guy who’s smart, savvy, don’t mind taking a chance or two now and then.’

‘You sure paint a rosy picture.’

‘Truth. I deal in truth. What comes from bein’ a Boy Scout my younger years. Point is, see, it takes me a long time to say something, but I’m glad to have you down here, okay?’

‘Thanks, lieutenant.’

‘It goes for Arch there and Papa. Arch, he was the first black cop on the force. And he didn’t suck ass, didn’t eat any shit. The ones that followed him, they, y’know, stuck their dick in the air see which the way wind’s blowin’, kissed the right asses, moved on up there. Fuckin’ Uncle Tom shit, but Arch, he didn’t bow down nowhere along the line. So here he is, best fuckin’ street cop on the force bustin’ hookers and library freaks.’

‘What happened to Papa?’

‘Papa was in Bunco workin’ under a shitass name of Shaushauser, a fuckin’ Nazi. He’s dead now. Rest his soul, all that shit, but he had it comin’. Anyway Papa brought down two, three big scams and this Shaushauser he takes the collars and even ends up with a citation. One day Papa has enough. He’s in the locker room with Shaushauser and suddenly he starts playing handball, only Shaushauser’s the ball. Bim, barn, bim, he takes the lieutenant off the wall a couple times, ties his feet in a knot, goes about his merry business. Shaushauser goes to the hospital, Papa does a ten-and-ten, a year back in uniform, and then down here. That’s what I mean about the system, Sharky. You can’t beat the motherfuckers, so you either give in or walk. I see you walkin’, all I’m sayin’. Anyways, it ain’t gloryland here, but it’s better than what you bad, you ask me. You know what they say — Fuck around with frogs you end up with warts on your dick.’

‘I think it’s “Lie down with dogs and get up with fleas.”’

‘Right, just what I said. Now let’s get goin’. Hey, Papa, hang up the phone goddammit, we got business. Arch, get your ass in here. We can’t wait until the day after tomorrow you finish that report. And somebody bring the tape recorder. Let’s put some goddamn wheels on this machine.’