The Big Bad City (29 page)

He turns to Katie where she’s sprawled half-asleep in the black leather chair.

“Now, young missy,” he says, and staggers over to her. “You want this money?”

Katie opens her eyes.

“Would you like to get paid?” he says.

“That’s why we’re here, boss,” Sal says, smiling, and moves to where Charlie’s standing in front of the chair.

“You want this money?” Charlie asks again, and shakes the bills in Katie’s face.

“Stop doing that,” she says sleepily, and flaps her hands on the air in front of her, trying to wave the money away.

“Sweet missy, you want this money, here’s what you got to do,” he says, and shoves the wad of bills into the right-hand pocket of his jacket. They bulge there like a sudden tumor. He unzips his fly. And all at once he’s holding himself in his hand.

“Come on, Charlie, put that away,” Sal says. For some reason, he is still smiling. He cannot imagine why he is still smiling, unless it’s because the situation is so absurd.

“Whut you want me to put away, boy?” Charlie says. “The money or my pecker?”

“Come on, Charlie.”

Sal is no longer smiling.

“You want me to put this money back in the safe? Or you want me to put my pecker in Katie’s mouth?”

“Come on, Charlie.”

“Which?” Charlie says. “Cause that’s the way it’s gonna be, boy. Either the little girl sucks my dick, or you don’t get paid.”

Sal doesn’t know how to deal with this. He’s a city boy unused to the ways of wildland crackers. He thinks for a moment he’ll run outside and get the others, all for one and one for all, and all that. But Charlie has grabbed Katie’s chin in his hand now, and he is moving in on her with a drunk’s bullheaded determination, waving his bulging purple cock at her the way he waved the wad of money only minutes ago. There is a look of such unutterable horror on Katie’s face that Sal knows this is going to be resolved in the very next instant without any help from the rest of the band, without
any help from him, either, for that matter. City-boy coward that he is, he stands frozen to the spot, watching, incapable of movement, unable to do anything but repeat, “Come on, Charlie.”

Katie comes out of the chair like a lioness.

She shoves at Charlie’s chest, and he staggers backward toward the open French doors.

“Hey,” he says, “I was only …”

But she is on him again, shoving out at him again, a hundred and ten pounds of sweaty blind fury pushing the fat drunken fool out onto the deck, and then lunging at him one last time, her fingers widespread on his chest, a hiss escaping her lips as she pushes him over the railing. There is a splash when he hits the water, and then, instantly, a terrible thrashing that tells them the alligators are getting to him even before he surfaces.

Katie is breathing very hard. The sweaty T-shirt clings to her, Sal can see her nipples puckering it in excitement, she has just killed a man.

“The money,” Katie says.

“Katie, you killed him.”

“The money. It was in his pocket.”

“Fuck the money,” Sal says.

“Do you remember the combination?”

“No. Let’s get out of here. Jesus, Katie, you
killed
him.”

“The combination. Do you remember it?”

On the river below, there is an appalling stillness.

Three to the right, stop on twenty, two to the left, past twenty, stop on seven. One to the right, stop on thirty-four.

He recites the numbers aloud to her as she slowly
turns the dial to the right, and to the left, and then to the right again. She opens the door. From the wad of money in the safe, she peels off the money due them, and returns the rest to the safe, and closes the door, and twists the dial to lock it again. Sal watches as she wipes the dial and the handle clean. She looks around one last time, and then they leave the office.

In the van, Sal says, “Got the bread, let’s go,” and Katie pulls her T-shirt away from her body, encouraging the cool flow from the air conditioner.

Rigoberto Mendez was setting up his bar at the Siesta when Ollie Weeks caught up with him at one o’clock that afternoon. Weeks ordered himself a beer, for which he did not offer to pay. Sitting at the bar, Ollie slurped noisily and happily from the Heineken bottle, watching Mendez as he polished glasses and checked whiskey levels.

“So tell me,” Ollie said, “where does this guy Sonny Cole live?”

“I got no idea,” Mendez said.

He was one of these Dominicans who thought he was handsome as hell, black hair slicked back, little toothbrush mustache under his nose, wearing a tanktop shirt bulging with muscles he probably got lifting weights in the slammer.

“Man comes in your club …”

“First time I ever saw him.”

“He killed a cop’s father, you know that?” Ollie said.

“No, I didn’t know that.”

“That makes it very serious,” Ollie said. “He maybe killed Juju, too, which is no great loss, but justice must be served, hm? I’m eager to talk to him. Find out where the two of them went when they left here. Find
out what they talked about. Find out did Sonny shoot him in the head, what do you think?”

“About what?”

“About did Sonny shoot him?”

“I don’t know what Sonny did. He never came back here since that Friday night. I don’t know where he lives, or what he does for a living. You’re pissing up the wrong tree.”

“Maybe so. Can I have another beer? This is very nice beer.”

Mendez opened another Heineken for him.

“You think he lives in the neighborhood?” he asked.

“I’m pretty sure he don’t.”

“How you suppose he got here?”

“He came looking for Juju.”

“I didn’t say
why
, I said
how
.”

“I don’t follow you.”

“Transportation,” Ollie said.

Mendez looked at him.

“Everybody has to have a means of transportation. He comes all the way up here to Hightown, how did he get here? Did he walk? Did he take the subway? Did he ride a bus? Did he come in a tax …”

“He drove here,” Mendez said.

Ollie put down the beer bottle.

“How do you know that?”

“I saw his car.”

“What kind of car?”

“A Honda.”

“What color?”

“Green.”

“You didn’t happen to see the license plate number, did you?”

“No. Why would I look at the license plate?”

“Anything peculiar about the car? Dented fender? Broken taillight, anything that might identify it?”

“Not that I saw.”

“When was this?”

“That I saw the car?”

“Yeah.”

“Friday night. When he came back to the club lookin for Tirana.”

“The hooker, yeah.”

“She’s a manicurist.”

“I’m sure she does great nails. That’s when you saw the car, huh?”

“Yeah. There was a parking ticket on the windshield. He tore it up and drove off.”

Bingo, Ollie thought.

Back at the precinct, Ollie called the One-Oh-Seven and asked for a kick-up on parking tickets written Friday night, August 28, targeting a green Honda parked in front of the Club Siesta. One of the sergeants there didn’t get back to him until three o’clock. He informed Ollie that the green Honda was an Accord registered to a woman named Coralee Hubert, who lived at 1114 Clarendon Avenue, in a better section of Diamondback, such as it was. Ollie took a cab uptown. He didn’t like to drive because the steering wheel and his belly were always in contention. Besides, when he took a cab, he charged it to squadroom petty cash, and if anybody questioned this, he told him where to go. There was another benefit to taking taxis. It enabled him to enter into lively discussion with Pakistani drivers.

The first thing Ollie always did with a Pakistani cabdriver—or for that matter, any cabdriver who looked like a fuckin foreigner, which was only every other cabdriver in the city—was show his shield. This was so there’d be no heated arguments later on; some of these fuckin camel jockeys were very sensitive.

“Police officer,” he said at once, flashing the tin. “I’m going to 1114 Clarendon Avenue.”

The driver said nothing.

“If you heard me, blink,” Ollie said.

“I heard you, sir.”

“Good. Do you know where Clarendon Avenue is?”

“I know where it is, sir.”

“Terrific, we’re already ahead of the game. I’m in kind of a hurry, Abdul, but I wouldn’t want you to speed.”

The driver’s name was Munsaf Azhar, displayed on a red card to the left of the yellow cab license, but Ollie called every Paki cabdriver Abdul. Not only did it make life much simpler, it also provided the enjoyment of watching the slow burn when the cabbie realized he couldn’t get pissed off at a cop.

“I see you got the bomb these days,” Ollie said pleasantly.

“Yes, sir,” the cabbie said.

“Does that mean you’ll be declaring war on America soon?”

“America is our friend,” the cabbie said.

“Bullshit,” Ollie said.

“Truly, sir.”

“Even though we ain’t sending you no more money?”

“I suppose we’ll have to get by somehow,” the cabbie said.

Had Ollie detected a slight touch of sarcasm there? One thing he hated—among everything else he hated—was baggy-pantsed foreigners trying to be clever.

“How you gonna get the bomb to the launching pad?” he asked. “Carry it on a donkey cart?”

The cabbie said nothing.

“Pack it on a camel?”

“We have means of transportation, sir.”

“Oh, I’m sure you do. Must be yellow cabs all over the country, same as here. Big industrialized nation got the bomb now, can blow everybody to bits.”

“We live in a bad neighborhood, sir.”

“Bullshit,” Ollie said. “
Everybody
lives in a bad neighborhood.
This
is a bad neighborhood right here. You see any nuclear bombs in this neighborhood?”

“We have powerful enemies, sir.”

“Ah, yes, m’boy, I’m certain you do, and what a pity it is. Are you in a hurry to get home now that your country’s got the bomb? Go defend your nation against all these powerful enemies?”

“I am in no hurry, sir.”

“I’ll bet you’re not. What’d you live in there, a fuckin mud hut?”

“I had a proper apartment, sir.”

“I’ll bet you made a fortune there, driving a yellow cab all over the place.”

“We are a poor country, sir, that is true.”

“But rich enough to build a fuckin bomb, huh?”

“We are only trying to protect ourselves, sir. America has the bomb, too, you know.”

“Oh, do we? But in America we don’t marry off our six-year-old daughters, do we?”

“You’re thinking of India, sir.”

“Gee, is that India? Where they marry off their six-year-old daughters to their eight-year-old cousins? I thought it was Pakistan. Pakistan must be the place where you wipe your ass with your left hand, is that Pakistan? The unclean hand?”

“We are a proud nation, sir. And we are proud to have built the bomb, yes, sir.”

“Now all you got to do is use it, right? That should make you real proud. Two big industrialized nations in a hurry to blow up the world. It’s just ahead there, Abdul. Clarendon Avenue.”

“I know the street, sir.”

“Oh, I’m sure you do. I’ll bet you could even get a job driving a cab in London, you know die streets so good.”

The cabbie pulled to the curb in front of 1114. The fare was six dollars and ten cents. Ollie gave him ten dollars and told him to take seven and give him a receipt. The cabbie gave him a receipt and three dollars in change. Ollie opened the door. There was not a word from the driver.

“What language do you speak in Pakistan?” Ollie asked.

“Urdu or Hindi,” the cabbie said. “Why do you ask, sir?”

“Is there a word for ‘Thanks’ in those languages?”

“Sir?”

“Because it’s the custom with big nuclear powers to say thanks when somebody gives you a fuckin dollar tip on a six-dollar ride. Or are you too busy buildin bombs?”

“I
said
thank you, sir.”

“Bullshit,” Ollie said, and got out, and left the door on the curb side open so the driver would have to get out of the cab to come around and close it.

1114 Clarendon was a six-story brick in a row of similar buildings. Ollie checked the mailboxes in the entry, and found one for an L. Hilbert in apartment 2A. He hit all the bell buttons under the mailboxes, heard a chorus of answering buzzers and pushed open the inside door. This was a nice quiet building, no cooking smells, no smells of piss in the hallway. He climbed to the second floor, found 2A at the top of the stairs, looked for a bell button, found none, and knocked on the door.

“Yes?” a woman’s voice called.

“Police,” he said.

“What?”

“Police, ma’am, would you open the door, please?”

“Police?” the woman said.

“Yes, ma’am.”

He waited. He knocked again. The door opened almost at once. A girl who couldn’t have been older than twenty, twenty-one, was standing there in jeans and a cotton T-shirt.

“Coralee Hilbert?” he said.

“Coral,” she said.

“Okay to come in, Coral?”

“Why?” she said.

“You own a green Honda Accord with the license plate WU 3200?”

“I do.”

“Like to talk to you about a violation, ma’am. Is it okay to come in?”

“Let me see your badge,” she said.

“Shield,” he corrected.

“What?” she said.

“Never mind,” he said, and took out the leather fob and showed her his gold and blue-enameled shield with the word
DETECTIVE
in an arc over the city’s seal.

“A detective?” she said, surprised. “What kind of violation
is
this?”

“Just a parking ticket, miss,” he said, “nothing to worry about,” and closed the door behind him. “You know anybody named Sonny Cole?”

They were standing in a small kitchen in a neat apartment, living room beyond, doors leading off to what he supposed were two bedrooms. Windows facing south. Afternoon sunlight streaming in. The place hummed with air-conditioning. It was cool and clean and pleasant. He wondered if the girl was a hooker.

“What about him?” she asked.

“Was he driving your car this past Friday night?”