Fat Ollie's Book

18

This is what they call The Denouement, I thought.

I am not a writer, Mr. Commissioner, but that is what writers call the chapter in the novel where everything falls into place and makes sense. It is alternatively called The Epiphany, which has religious overtones, I know, but which means some kind of dramatic change, as for example when a woman looks at herself in the mirror and sees looking back at her someone all bleary-eyed from being knocked unconscious, and all tied up to a chair in a basement she doesn’t even know where.

A black woman came in carrying a tray upon which was, or were, a donut and a cup of coffee, when a person was starving to death. There was also an Uzi on the tray, which the black woman was careful to remove before placing the tray in front of me.

“Here you go, sister,” she said.

I asked her how I was supposed to eat with my hands tied behind my back.

“You won’t have to worry about eatin too much longer,” she said, and burst out laughing, which I considered ominous.

“You goan be dead by midnight,” she added, which I also took to be a bad sign.

The clock was ticking.

Along about eleven-thirty, the door opened and Mr. Mercer Grant himself came marching down the steps. Behind him was the French receptionist from the Rêve du Jour Underwear Factory.

“This is my wife Marie,” he said. “By the way, those are our real names.”

“Then why did you tell me they werenotyour real names?” I asked.

“To lure you to the factory,” he said. “It’s called entrapment. It’s done all the time.”

“How about your cousin Ambrose Fields?”

“You rang, madam?” someone asked, and a black guy as big as the one inThe Green Mile, who could draw snot out of your body and make you able to urinate again, came walking down the basement steps, ducking under the hanging light bulb as he approached me. “Dat ismyreal name, too,” he said, and grinned.

Nothing could surprise me anymore.

All I knew was that the clock was ticking.

“So where are the diamonds?” I asked.

“What diamonds?” Grant asked, grinning to show the gold-and-diamond tooth in his mouth. His wife Marie stood by his side, all curly haired and brown eyed, and not wearing a bra. She was grinning, too.

“The conflict diamonds,” I said. “Isn’t this all about blood diamonds?”

“Have you forgotten about theotherblood diamonds?” Grant asked.

“I’ll bet she’s forgotten about the other blood diamonds,” Ambrose said.

“Oh dear, she’s forgotten all about the other blood diamonds,” Marie said.

“I thoughtyouwere supposed to be dead by Tuesday,” I said.

“That was to throw you off the scent,” she said. “It’s done all the time.”

“Besides,” Ambrose said, “don’t worry. You yourself will be dead by midnight.”

“Butwhy?” I asked.

And a voice I had heard somewhere before said, “Because.”

I looked toward the stairway leading from above.

Someone I knew was coming down the steps.

AT MIDNIGHTthat Tuesday, they came into the basement simultaneously, the six detectives in Kevlar vests, and the three men wearing ski masks. It would have been a regular traffic jam if Emilio and Aine had also showed up at the stroke of midnight, but at that very moment they were just coming around the corner to 3211 Culver. When they heard the shooting start, they almost turned and ran in the opposite direction.

It was Rosita’s goons who started shooting first.

They did not know in which direction to turn. It was as if the Northern Alliance were coming down the stairs from the ground floor, and the Pashtun were breaking in the door from the back yard. Everybody had guns. Somebody was bound to get hurt. The goons figured it wasn’t going to be them. So they started shooting.

They took out the three men in the ski masks first.

They were easy marks, these three. They came down the steps one after the other, in single file. You shot the first guy in the row, he fell over and gave you a clear shot at the second one, and so on till all three of them were lying on the steps bleeding from a dozen holes, one of them between the eyes of the first guy’s ski mask.

The guys in the Kevlar vests were another matter.

To begin with, they came in following the business end of a battering ram that sent wood from the door flying all over the place. And they were all six of them carrying assault rifles.

Rosita’s goons—Rosita herself, for that matter—recognized the weapons as AR-15s, heavy Colt carbines that could tear off a man’s head. As the goons turned toward the door, one of the guys coming in yelled, “Police! Hold it right there!”

The guy was a woman.

The goons had no qualms about shooting a woman, police detective or not. It was only the AR-15 assault rifles that gave them pause.

The pause was all the team needed.

They swarmed over the room like fire ants, yelling and swearing, and snapping on handcuffs, and telling anyone in sight that he, or she in Rosita’s case, was under arrest. Parker picked up the suitcase with the hundred and fifty keys of coke in it.

“Better file a report on that,” Eileen reminded him.

He shot her a dirty look.

As if he would evernotfile a report.

EMILIO AND AINEhuddled in the shadows near the building.

There were police cars angled into the curb now, their dome lights blinking. There were unmarked cars as well. It looked like the whole police department was here. The guy they’d seen in Shanahan’s last night came out carrying a suitcase. Livvie came out behind a woman in handcuffs. There were other detectives with assault rifles. This had to be a big bust.

As Emilio took a step forward, Aine put her hand on his arm, trying to stop him. He shook it off.

“Detective?” he said.

Eileen Burke turned.

“Yes?”

“Don’t worry about your report,” he said, and winked.

“What?”

“I burned it,” he said. “The bad guys won’t ever see it.”

“What?” she said again.

“But you don’t have to worry. I memorized it,” he said, not realizing that in that moment he became one of a long line of traditional storytellers.

Eileen still didn’t know what he was talking about.

Just then, Rosita made a sudden move as if to run. Eileen grabbed her by the arm, and said, “Don’t get any ideas, sister,” and shoved her toward one of the cars at the curb.

Emilio’s only regret was that he would never know how she’d got out of that damn basement.