Violet Henrys a.k.a. Violet Trammel.
“I got to go, son. They just called my number.”
“Talk to you later, Pops.”
In those few seconds Violet had unlocked, opened, passed through, and closed her barred gate and door.
She was Paulie’s wife pretending to be Paulie’s mother’s daughter so that she could take over Bea’s low-income home. It was part of a scam that a local contractor, who built that housing for the city and state, used to sell to qualified grifters. Crooks need a place to live too.
At any other time I would have played a waiting game. Sooner or later either Paulie would come to see Violet or she would lead me to him. I could spend a few days working on my painting, waiting for the fly to come to me. But on that particular day I had people from DC to Beantown wanting to kill either me or mine.
I needed to speed up the process, so, abandoning my art materials, I went to a local bodega and bought a small box of envelopes. I wrote a simple note on the front of one, sealed in a hundred-dollar bill, compliments of Josh Farth, and slipped the packet through the bars and under Violet’s front door; then I fast-walked down to the corner of D and waited.
Usually I would have charged that hundred dollars, plus the cost of my artist’s disguise, to my client; but my client was dead and so I spotted him.
It took seventeen minutes for her to call.
“Hello?” I said to what my phone told me was an unknown caller.
“Did you put this note under my door?” Violet Henrys-DeGeorges-Trammel asked.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“You’d really pay a thousand dollars just to talk to Paulie?”
“That’s what I wrote.”
“But you’d really do it?”
“I will.”
“Were you the man who went to Bea’s place today?” she asked.
“I sure was.”
“And did she tell you how to get to me?”
“No. You signed the visitors’ clipboard and I knew that Paulie is married to a woman whose first name is Violet.”
“Were married,” she corrected. “We cut the knot just before the last time he was sent up.”
“Sorry to hear that.”
“No need,” she said; I could almost hear the sneer. “People get divorced because they want to.”
“And why do they marry?” I asked.
“Because they’re fools.”
“Nine hundred dollars for me and your ex to talk.” I had already started walking back toward her door.
“I thought you said a thousand.”
“You got a hundred of that in your hands.”
“That’s just for the call,” she said.
“How do we work this?” I asked. I was only a few steps from her address.
“You pay me and I get Paulie to call you.”
I was about to say that that was a bad deal for me when I noticed the man walking toward me.
I disconnected the call and said, “Hey, Paulie.”
38
He wore a brown jacket, skinny black jeans, a gray-and-blue-plaid shirt, and a bright orange bow tie. His shoes were blunt-toed and brown, and the generous thatch of brown hair was shot through with strands of gray. He still had those freckles and if I was forced to report on the color of his eyes I would have said blue-gray.
Those pale eyes opened wide when I greeted him.
“You Violet’s new man?”
“Leonid McGill,” I said, extending a hand.
We shook, him squeezing to test the strength of my grip.
“What do you want, Mr. McGill?”
“I need to have a talk with you. I was going to offer Violet nine hundred dollars to put us together. I’ll be happy to give it to you instead.”
“Talk about what?”
“Let’s go grab a coffee and make the exchange,” I said. “Cash for information.”
The skinny scam artist considered his options. He didn’t want his business messed with but I posed a threat whether we talked or not. He needed to know what I knew and also there was a shot at nine hundred dollars.
“Okay,” he said after a full minute standing in front of Violet’s cell-like door. “All right. There’s a place I like over on Lafayette. We could hoof it over there.”
Half a block from Violet’s apartment my phone sounded. I looked at the screen, saw it was another unknown caller. I figured that it was Violet, disconnected the request, and turned the ringer off.
On the way Paulie probed me.
“How you know Violet?” he asked.
“Never met her.”
“Then what were you doing waiting for me at her door?”
I told nearly the whole story, leaving out Luke’s name. By the time I got to the visit with his mother we had reached the Excellent Bean on Lafayette, just a few blocks south of Astor Place.
At the counter I ordered a triple latte for me and a large hot chocolate for Paulie. He’d taken a small table in a corner.
“What is it that I know worth all that money to you, McGill?” he asked when we were finally settled.
“I’m looking for a young woman named Celia Landis but you might know her as Coco Lombardi.”
With eyes as expressive as his, Paulie could never be a cardplayer. Those bright orbs darted from my big hands to the door. They calculated his chance of getting away but came up with odds too long for his comfort.
“I, I don’t know those names.”
“That’s too bad,” I said. “Because if I can’t get to her I’m going to have to tell the people I work for that I came to a dead end named Paulie DeGeorges. I don’t know for a fact but I’ve heard that they already killed two men who didn’t know anything.”
Paulie’s shoulders juddered and he looked down at his hands.
“This is not your regular scam, Paulie. These people have power and money. They don’t give a fuck about an ex-con like you.”
“You don’t have to give them my name,” he suggested.
“I do if I expect to get paid.”
“So if I tell you where she is you’re gonna tell them?”
“Actually no,” I said. “I think that book she stole might get me a whole lot more than they’re offering.”
“I thought you said that they were dangerous, killers.”
I sat back in my coffeehouse chair and smiled. All around the café young men and women were sitting and talking. I noted that the women smiled more than did the men. I was smiling too, challenging the odds. It was an easy grin because I was confident in my footing.
“Who do you know, Paulie?”
“What do you mean?”
“In the Life,” I said, “somebody that knows the names of the players who could tell you about Leonid McGill.”
“I got my people,” he said defensively. “Prison ain’t on the moon.”
“Call him up,” I said. “Tell him my name and see what he says.”
Paulie peered at me like a sparrow that thinks he might have seen a shadow moving through the bushes. He even turned his head to the side.
Finally he brought an old cell phone out of a green pocket and flipped it open.
While he entered the number I took up my phone and typed in the letters HU.
Hush answered on the third ring.
“LT.”
“Twill said you had some worries.”
“No worries, brother.” He had never called me brother before. I wondered what that meant. “Might be something, might not. Either way I know what to do.”
“You need me to come by?”
“Mr. McGill,” Paulie said.
I held up a finger for him to wait.
“No, LT, I’m okay. Matter’a fact I’m kinda havin’ fun.”