Fat Ollie's Book

13

WELL NOW, Parker thought, isn’t this interesting?

The Gaucho is giving us information on a Rosie Washington deal going down this Tuesday night, and here’s Rosie herself marching into his shop big as daylight on Sunday afternoon, will wonders never?

Of course, they were both spics, so who knewwhatevil the two of them had cooked up together?

Half-spic, anyway, in her case.

He took up a position across the street, thinking maybe he should try to get a court order to plant a bug in The Cowboy’s shop.

THE FIRST THINGPalacios thought as he came through the beaded curtains from the back of his shop was that Rosie knew he’d ratted her out.

“Hey, hello, Rosie,” he said, smiling. “What brings you here?”

“I need a dreams book,” she said. “For my cousin.”

Not everyone knew what kind of a shop Palacios ranbehindhis shop. Most people truly did come in for religious, paranormal, or supernatural items. So it was entirely possible that Rosie had a cousin who needed a book that would explain the significance of a recent dream so that she’d know whether she was going to win the lottery or fall under a spell instead. No one but the police knew that Palacios was an informer. Well, of course not. If everyone knew how he picked up a few extra pennies, how could he ever garner any information at all? It was terrifying to think that Rosie had somehow discovered he’d be getting a tidy little sum after they busted her this Tuesday night. Rosie was not in the business of selling violets to opera goers. Rosie was in a business where people broke other people’s heads and shot them in the balls.

“What kind of dreams has your cousin been having?” Palacios asked.

“She’s been dreaming that a cop is following her,” Rosie said, and Palacios went pale. “Gaucho,” she said in a rush, “I think the law is on my tail. Can I go out your back door?”

Palacios almost wet his pants in relief.

AT FIRST, Ollie thought the girl sitting on the park bench with Donner was the Emmy he was looking for. The girl was a blonde, wearing a short blue skirt and knee-high blue socks, flat brown shoes, and an abundant white blouse. As he came closer to the bench, however, he realized that the girl couldn’t be older than thirteen.

“Go play, Heather,” Donner told her. “But don’t get lost.”

“Okay, Bill,” the girl said, and smiled at Ollie, and then walked off toward the playground equipment on the hill.

“Little old for you, ain’t she?” Ollie said.

“Yeah, well, times are difficult,” Donner said. “You want to lecture me, or you want to hear about Emmy?”

“I’m listening.”

“She’s a boy.”

Ollie looked at him.

“That’s not what Stein told me.”

“Stein told you right. Emmy can pass for a girl any day of the week. But she ain’t Emmy, she’s Emilio. And Emilio’s a boy.”

“Emilio what?”

“Ah-ha,” Donner said. “That’s where the cash comes in.”

“Do you have a last name for him?”

“I do.”

“Do you know where he lives?”

“I do not.”

“So how much do you want for thisvaluableinformation?”

“I told you. A deuce.”

“For just a name? No address?”

“The valuable information is that you’re looking for a cross-dresser. The minute I give you his name, you’re on him like a bag of fleas.”

Ollie sighed.

“Lollipops cost,” Donner said philosophically.

Ollie opened his wallet. He took two hundreds from it, and handed them to Donner. Up on the hill behind them, Heather was on one of the swings, blue skirt flying, white panties showing. Donner fingered the bills.

“Herrera,” he said. “Emilio Herrera.”

Of which there were probably ten thousand in this city alone.

LUCAS RILEYwas perhaps twenty years old, they guessed, a skinny, blue-eyed kid some five feet, nine inches tall, freckles spattered all over his cheeks and the bridge of his nose, the map of County Donegal all over his face. He was wearing jeans, a Ramsey U sweatshirt, high-topped workmen’s shoes, and a baseball cap turned backwards, the peak at the back of his head, the band on his forehead. They found him at last in the library at Ramsey U, and they asked him to come outside with them, please, and then walked him over to the school’s football field, empty on Sunday except for some kids in jogging clothes running around the perimeter.

They sat in the stands under a clear blue sky.

The breeze was mild, the sun was shining.

But Lucas Riley had swatted a nineteen-year-old girl last Monday morning at eleven-thirty after he discovered she’d spent the weekend with Lester Henderson. And Henderson had been killed an hour or so before that.

“So tell us about it,” Carella said.

“I lost my temper.”

“Twice?”

“I don’t know what that means.”

“Did you lose your temper with the councilman, too?”

“I never met the slimy bastard.”

“How’d you find out about them?”

“Her girlfriend.”

“Carrie’s girlfriend?”

Lucas nodded. “I called her Saturday night, I thought maybe Carrie was there studying with her, she told me she had a lot of studying to do that weekend. So Maria said No, she wasn’t there, and she sounded sort of hesitant, you know, the way people do when they’re hiding something, holding something back? So I said What is it, Maria? and she opened up, told me Carrie’d been seeing this older man since just after Thanksgiving, told me she was tired of making alibis for her, told me Carrie was upstate right that minute with the son of a bitch! I wanted tokillhim!”

The detectives looked at him.

He seemed to realize what he’d just said, and immediately added, “But I didn’t.”

“You beat her up instead,” Kling said.

“I only hit her once.”

“Where were you before then?”

“Like say between ten and ten-thirty that morning?”

“I had an early class.”

“How early?”

“Nine o’clock. It let out at eleven. I went straight to Carrie’s afterward. She was still unpacking from her big trip.”

“Where’d this class meet?”

“Morten Parker Hall. Room 713.”

“What’s the instructor’s name?”

“Dr. Nagel.”

“What’s his first name?”

“She’s a woman. Phyllis, I think. Or Felice, I’m not sure.”

“Does she keep attendance?”

“I’m sure she does.”

“What sort of class is it?” Carella asked.

“Romantic Poetry,” Lucas said.

ROSITA THOUGHTthese three people were total dummies, and she could not imagine how they’d managed to come up with three hundred thousand dollars, but they assured her they already had the money, and it was now merely a matter of ascertaining that she could deliver the product.

“How do we know you evenhavethe jelly beans?” their apparent leader said.

His name was Lonnie Doyle, or so he’d said, she never believed any names that were exchanged in drug transactions. She herself had told them her name was Rosalie Wadsworth, which was close to Rosita Washington, but no cigar, thank you. She did not think Lonnie Doyle could possibly be this man’s real name, but then again maybe he was stupid enough to have given her a square handle, who could tell when you were dealing with dummies?

One sure sign that these people were not playing with a full deck was the way they kept referring to the cocaine as “jelly beans.” They were sitting at a back table in a little cuchi frito joint on Culver, maybe two or three other people in the place, plus the guy behind the counter. There was not the remotest possibility that anyone had planted a bug here, but they were usingcode,anyway, could you believe it! Jelly beans!

“I will have the jelly beans,” Rosita said. “And they will be very high-grade jelly beans.”

Jesus, she thought.

Another one of the dummies, a guy who’d introduced himself as Constantine Skevopoulos, a phony name if ever there was one, asked if these “jelly beans” would be in the quantity specified? He was a twitchy little man with a silly grin. “Quantity specified” were the exact words he used. Dopey little grin on his face. Quantity specified.

“Thejellybeans will…” Rosita started, and rolled her eyes, and because she knew there couldn’t in a million years be a bug in this place, and since she knew Juanito behind the counter there was a little deaf in the bargain, she said flat out, “The coke will come in tenkilo lots at twenty thousand a lot, for a total of three hundred thousand dollars.”

The one named Harry Curtis looked suddenly alarmed, either by her having used the word “coke” or else by the enormity of the purchase price, which Rosita had to admit was a thousand more per lot than the going price, but hey these were dummies. Harry Curtis—if that was his real name, which she felt sure it wasn’t—was a huge man. He sat hunkered over the table like a grizzly bear, his eyes popping wide open when he heard Rosita talking about cocaine so openly. The other two looked startled as well, glancing around the room as if expecting an immediate raid, the dummies.

“So if we understand the purchase price,” Rosita said, “and if we know how manyjelly beansyou’ll be buying,” stressing the words, rolling her eyes again, “all we need to settle, once and for all, is where the transaction will take place.”

“Don’t say the address out loud,” Constantine said, twitching and grinning.

“Write it down,” Lonnie said.

“On a piece of paper,” Harry said.

Where else? Rosita thought. On the wall?

She opened her handbag, tore a sheet of paper from her address book…

“Letter it,” Harry said.

“So we can read it,” Lonnie said.

Constantine nodded and grinned.

In a large bold hand, Rosita lettered the address onto the sheet of paper: 3211CULVER AVENUE

And then, just to show these dummies they were truly stupid to be worrying about a bug in a cuchi frito joint, she read the address out loud, anyway.

“Thirty-two eleven Culver Avenue,” she said. “The basement. Be there. And bring the money.”

The three men hurried out of there as if their pants were on fire. Rosita lingered over her Coke—the soft drink, not the jelly bean—and then left the shop, passing a girl sitting at a table nearby. The girl was wearing a flared skirt and a white blouse, white ankle socks and brown loafers. She could have been your average Irish teenager were it not for the apathetic look that betrayed her for a drug addict. Rosita recognized the look at once; dope was her business. She nodded understandingly, perhaps even sympathetically, and walked past the girl and out of the shop.

The girl did not nod back.

The girl was Aine Duggan.

IT WAS NOTuntil ten past one that Parker realized Rosita had shaken the tail. He debated going into the shop and confronting Palacios with the accusation that he’d aided and abetted the very person Parker was following, but then that would alert the son of a bitch if he and Miss Washington with the swiveling little ass were trying to pull something funny here.

So he went back to the squadroom and told Eileen he thought the Washington woman had made him, and he suggested that Eileen pick up the surveillance. Otherwise they’d go down that friggin basement on Tuesday night—

He actually used the word “friggin” in deference to Eileen’s delicacy. Eileen found this amusing; in her many years as a cop, she had certainly heard the word “fuck” in all its derivations. But even if she weren’t a cop, which she most certainly was, all she had to do was go to the movies on any given Sunday, and she’d get an education she’d never received in church, believe me, Father Mulahy.

“Go down the friggin basement this Tuesday night,” Parker said, “and find nothing there but cockroaches and rats. I think Palacios may be tryin’a pull something funny here.”

“Why?” Eileen asked. “No bust, no money.”

Which was a thought.

“Maybe she’s paying him more than we are,” Parker suggested.

“Why?” Eileen asked.

Another good thought.

“To steer us in the wrong direction.”

“You think Palacios would risk that?”

“I don’t know what he’d do. I just don’t want to look foolish on this thing.”

“So what do you want me to do?”

“Go down that basement tomorrow. Thirty-two eleven Culver. Check it out. Make sure we won’t be walkin into some kinda booby trap there.”

“Why don’t you go there yourself?” Eileen asked.

“Tomorrow’s my day off,” Parker said.

“Then let’s go there together. Right now.”

“It’s almost quitting time,” Parker said.

“It’s only two-thirty,” Eileen said.

“Yeah, but the clock is ticking,” Parker said. “Time we got there, it’d be time we went home. Let it wait till tomorrow.”

“Okay,” Eileen said, and shrugged.

“What’s that, that shrug?”

“I’ll let it wait till tomorrow,” Eileen said, and shrugged again.

“You know, there’s some things you ought to learn if you plan to stay here awhile,” Parker said.

“Oh, and what are these things?”

“These things are you don’t try to second-guess your partner, and everything can always wait till tomorrow.”

“I didn’t know I was second-guessing you.”

“And you don’t sass him, either.”

“I see,” Eileen said.

“Just so we understand each other.”

“Oh, yes, perfectly. But tell me, Andy. Would you think I was second-guessing you if I checked out that basement right now? Because I have to tell you, the friggin clockisindeed ticking, and I don’t want to walk into a mess of shit Tuesday night.”

“Be my guest,” Parker said, thinking he’d won the argument.

“You have the address.”

“I have the address,” she said, and turned and walked off with a hooker’s strut, the bitch.

AINE DUGGANwas sitting in the hallway outside Emilio’s apartment when he got back from Majesta at three that afternoon.

“Where you been?” she asked, rising and dusting off the back of her skirt.

“All over Majesta,” he said. “There’s no Rêve du Jour Underwear.”

“Gee, that’s too bad,” Aine said.

She didn’t know what the hell he was talking about.

“I walked all over the area. There’s no such thing as Riverview Place, either.” He was unlocking the door. “Not that I’m surprised,” he said, and retrieved his key. He swung the door open, and walked in ahead of her.

There was a mattress on the floor near the windows, an unpainted dresser he’d bought in a junk shop off Leighton, a floor lamp with a soiled and split linen shade, and that was it. Your everyday, garden variety junkie’s pad. His toilet hadn’t been cleaned since the day Julius Caesar got assassinated. Even Aine, who you could bet had seen some fine toilets in her life, was reluctant to pee in there.

“You running out of underwear?” she asked.

“No, I got plenty underwear.”

“So why were you looking for underwear?”

“I wasn’t. I was looking for the diamonds.”

“What diamonds?” she asked, and flopped down on the mattress.

“In Livvie’s report.”

“Livvie, right.Ihaven’t worn underwear since I was seventeen,” she said. “No bra, no panties, either.”

“That’s evident,” he said, and glanced over at her where she lay somewhat carelessly on the mattress. Aine smiled like a blushing maiden, and pulled her skirt down over her knees.

“You still looking for that bar near a police station?” she asked.

“I am.”

“I think I found it.”

“Really? Where is it?”

“It’s not called O’Malley’s, though. It’s called Shanahan’s. And it ain’t two blocks from the Oh-One, which as I suspected don’t exist. It’s two blocks from the Eight-Seven.”

“The Eight-Seven,” Emilio said, trying to place it. “On Grover Avenue?”

“Facing the park, yeah. But the bar ain’t on Grover. It’s on St. John’s Road, two blocks over.”

“Too many streets in this damn city,” Emilio said.

“It’s easy to find,” Aine said. “I’ll take you there, if you like. You ever feel like fucking anymore?”

“Not very often, no.”

“Neither do I. Smack’s the best fuck I ever had.”

“Me, too.”

“Yeah,” she said.

They both fell silent, thinking about this basic truth, almost cherishing the knowledge that they were each and separately married to heroin.

“I think there’s a big drug buy going down soon,” Aine said out of the blue.

“Good,” Emilio said. “How do you know?”

“I heard these people talking in a cuchi frito joint on Culver. This Spanish broad, she looks Spanish, is selling ten-kilo lots at twenty large a lot.”

“That’s a lot of lots,” Emilio said, making a joke, but Aine didn’t catch it because she was doing arithmetic.

“Selling it for three hundred thou, that comes to fifteen lots.”

“That’s a lot of lots,” Emilio said again, but she still didn’t catch it. “When’s this gonna happen?”

“That’s the only thing I don’t know,” she said. “A basement at 3211 Culver is where the buy’s going down. A hundred and fifty keys of cocaine.”

Emilio looked at her.

“You don’t think all that stuff’s already down there in that basement, do you?” he asked.

THE BASEMENTwas clean.

A table, four chairs around it, a wash sink in the corner.

Door at the back leading to the alley outside.

Steps coming down from the ground floor of the building above.

Eileen figured it’d be best to come in through the back door. Bust it open with a battering ram, surprise them at the table testing the dope and handing over the money. Rosita Washington wouldn’t be coming here alone, that was for sure, not if the story about the Miami boys ripping her off was true. Her people would be armed. And so might the three grifters buying the stuff. She planned to ask Byrnes for a full-force raiding party, Kevlar vests and assault rifles, never mind any heroics Parker might have in mind.

She walked over to the back door, confirmed that a Mickey Mouse lock was on it, looked around the room one last time, and then pulled the chain on the hanging overhead light bulb. In the scant daylight spilling from the narrow street level windows, she found her way to the steps, and climbed them to the ground floor. She listened at the door there before letting herself into the building. A woman carrying two bags of groceries and climbing the steps to the first floor gave her only a backward glance. Eileen walked to the entrance foyer and let herself out into the street.

A young Hispanic male and an Irish-looking female were just approaching the building. The male stopped dead in his tracks. His mouth fell open. He looked directly into Eileen’s face and said, “Livvie?”

“Sorry,” Eileen said, smiling, and walked on past him.

Emilio turned to Aine and said, “It was her, wasn’t it?”

Or even she.

THE GIRLSusually started their stroll at nine, nine-thirty, sometimes even later. They’d learned from experience that nobody wanted to get laid too soon after dinnertime. These men were different from the ones who frequented the massage parlors. Those guys went upstairs at any time of day, whenever the urge hit them, some of them for quickies on their way to the train station before going home to their sweet little wives in the burbs. The johns here in Ho Alley were different.

You rarely saw a man on foot here. First off, it was too dangerous, and secondly you had to accommodate somebody like that with a room, and a room cost money, not to mention all the bother of finding one, it just didn’t pay. The men looking for tail here usually cruised by in automobiles, casing the merchandise, and then drove up to the curb and parked, and waited for a girl to come over, and lean into the window, and talk business. The price of a handjob was fifty bucks. A blowjob cost a hundred. Nowadays, you couldn’t get laid for less than three, and most girls didn’t want to bother with intercourse at all. Most girls found intercourse too complicated, what with having to take off their panties and lift their skirts and place themselves in a vulnerable position on the back seat of a car in case the law showed. A handjob or a blowjob, you could perform on the front seat, sitting like a lady, fully clothed. Besides, most girls found intercourse too intimate. It wasn’t any different on the street than in high school. Nowadays, in high school, a blowjob was the equivalent of a goodnight kiss.

Except for cops they knew, who were on the take and who would look the other way in return for any quick sex they could get, the girls were ever on the alert for the law. You got some jackass uniformed cop who didn’t know how the system worked, he’d come around like some dumb preacher spouting hellfire and damnation, and next thing you knew you were in a holding cell waiting for night court. Or sometimes even a detective, although most of them knew better, they’d been around a long while, they knew how it worked, they couldn’t care less if you blew the Mayor in broad daylight on the steps of City Hall. It was the young cops you had to watch out for. The ones who still believed.

The girls on stroll that night spotted Ollie for a cop the moment he entered the street. Maybe it was the arrogant stride, or the know-it-all look on his face. Or maybe it was because, first of all, he was on foot, and next he didn’t seem to be seriously looking for a piece of ass. The hungry, desperate, guilty appearance of a bona fide john just wasn’t there. In ten seconds flat, half the girls on the street disappeared into doorways, or walked around the corner, or simply went home for the night, they didn’t need trouble from a fat flatfoot. The other half were otherwise engaged in parked automobiles all up and down the street. Ollie floated up Ho Alley like an aircraft carrier steaming into the Persian Gulf. He was looking for a blond Puerto Rican cross-dressing hooker named Emilio Herrera.

The first girl he talked to was just coming out of a parked Caddy near the closed Korean nail place up the block. She swung her legs out of the car, adjusted her short skirt, waggled her fingers goodbye to the white man behind the wheel, and turned to find a person who weighed perhaps a ton and a half standing there in her path, oh shit, she thought, a cop. The Caddy pulled away from the curb in a wink.

“Hi,” she said cheerily. “You lost?”

“I’m looking for a friend of mine,” Ollie said.

“Oh?” the girl said, and looked him up and down. “Maybe I can help instead.”

Maybe he wasn’t a cop after all. Though a quick glance up the street revealed an amazing lack of pulchritude on display, a sure sign that the other girls on stroll had made him for what he was and had split the scene toot sweet.

“I’m really looking for this one particular person,” Ollie said.

Still hadn’t flashed the tin, though, so who could tell? And if he was merely here looking for sex, why hand him over to anyone else?

“What’s her name?” she asked. “Though, you know, maybe I can help you.”

“She’s a he,” Ollie said, and grinned like a hyena. “Emilio Herrera, you know her? Him?”

“No, I’m sorry, I don’t,” the girl said at once, and then, “In fact, I was on my way home, so if you’ll excuse me…”

“Hold it just a second,” Ollie said. He was still smiling. The girl was thinking he was either a fat pig of a john who dug boys, in which case she didn’t want to have anything to do with him, or else he was a fat pig of a cop looking to bust Emilio for narcotics use or breaking and entry, both of which pursuits Emilio was pretty good at. In which case shestilldidn’t want to have anything to do with him.

“Emmy?” he said. “He goes by the name Emmy?”

“Never heard of himorher,” the girl said.

“And what’s your name?”

“Why is that important to you?”

“Because we like to know who’s impeding the progress of a police investigation,” he said, and out came the tin, all blue and gold, Detective/First Grade it said on it. Oh shit, she thought again.

“I’m Talu,” she said.

“Talu indeed,” he said, “ah yes.”

She wondered who he was imitating.

He sounded like Al Pacino in some movie she saw ages ago, before she got in the life.

She was wondering, too, how she could get him off her back about Emilio, whom she knew only as a transvestite junkie who catered to faggots who didn’t know they were faggots. She didn’t want trouble here tonight. A minute ago, she’d told him she was on her way home. Right now, that’s all she wanted to do, go home, fast.

“And what may your last name be, m’little chickadee?”

“Diaz,” she said.

“In which case, you might be familiar with this Herrera girl or boy, as the case may be, who is yet another person of the Hispanic persuasion, not to mention the profession you both share.”

“I don’t know what profession that is you’re talking about,” Talu said.

“Ah me, a poor innocent adrift on the night,” Ollie said.

“If you don’t mind, Detective, I’d really like to go home now.”

“Ah, but I thought I detected a faint glimmer in your eye when I mentioned the name Herrera,” Ollie said.

“No, I don’t know the man.”

“Then I must have been mistaken, Talu.”

“Yes, you surely were.”

“In which case, do go home. And may God bless you,” he said.

She couldn’t believe her own ears.

She turned and was out of there in a Taliban minute.

Ollie was thinking he’d hit the files when he got back to the office, see if they had anything that might connect little Miss Talu Diaz here, with her twitchy little ass and mile-high heels, to Mr. Emilio Herrera, with his blond wig and big tits, who had not showed up on the computer, and who so far was—

A redheaded girl wearing a short black skirt and a pink halter top was coming around the corner. She spotted Ollie, smiled, came swiveling over on her spike heels, and said, “I’m Anya,” it sounded like. “Looking for a date, sweetheart?”

• • •

“IT’S DEFINITELY YOUhe’s looking for,” Aine said. “He gave me your name. Emilio Herrera. He gave me your street name, too. Emmy. He said you’re a blonde with big tits.”

“Well, Iam,” Emilio said, and laughed.

He was high on marijuana. This was unusual for a heroin addict. She almost resented him being high. In fact, shedidresent it. She was trying to give him important information here, and he was acting like a giggly little girl.

“Now that is very funny,” he said, and laughed. “A big fat cop looking to fuck a little Puerto Rican boy with faketetas.That is truly comical.”

“He wasn’t looking forsex,” Aine said. “He was looking foryou.Do you understand me? He thinks you’re involved in some kind of crime.”

“Well, Iam,” Emilio said, and laughed again. “Did he say which crime? Did he say possession, did he say burglary, did he say grand theft, auto, did he say prostitution? I am involved in a greatmanycrimes, Aine. The man should have been more specific.”

“Well, he wasn’t. He was on a fishing expedition, is what it was.”

“But you got the feeling he thought I was involved in some crime or another.”

“Yes, that’s the impression I got.”

“He told you he was looking for me…”

“Yes.”

“…because I was involved in some crime or…”

“No.”

“He didnotsay I was involved in some…?”

“No, he didn’t come out and say that. But it’s what I discerned.”

He loved it when she used big words. He found it very amusing when she used big words. He wondered what crime he was supposed to be involved in. What did this fat cop want from him? Did he evenknowany fat cops?

“Afatcop, did you say?”

“Ohman,fat,” Aine said, and rolled her eyes.

“Did he tell you his name?”

“Detective Weeks.”

“From what precinct?”

“The Eight-Eight.”

“I’ll bet he thinks I’m involved in that diamond deal.”

“What diamond deal?”

“In Livvie’s report.”

“Who the fuck is Livvie?”

“The report she wrote.”

“Oh,thatagain,” Aine said.

“I’ll bet he’s after all those blood diamonds Livvie is locked up with in that basement,” Emilio said, and suddenly looked very sober, though he wasn’t. “Do you think it was her?” he asked. “Do you think she got out of that basement somehow? Do you think she might be somehow involved in the big dope deal going down? Though I have to say I didn’t see no dope down there, did you see any dope down there?”

“You know I didn’t.”

“Are you sure you heard the address right? 3211 Culver?”

“I’m sure I heard what I heard,” Aine said.

“Maybe we should check out that bar you located,” Emilio said.

“What do you think, Aine?”

“You got any more of that grass?” Aine said.