“I know how to do it,” Hogan said. “So do my partners.”
“Well, good, maybe the numbers are written in Spanish. After you bring ’em up, let me know what you find in the system, okay? I’ll be waiting. So will the Mayor’s Office, cause Lester Henderson wasn’t just some punk on the street, you know?” He paused for emphasis. “I wouldn’t be bothering you with all this, Mr. Hogan, cause I know how valuable your time is, but it so happens the only prints on the weapon were smeared, and we got nothing to go on. Which is why your expertise in the matter is so urgently demanded, ah yes,” Ollie said.
“The numbers were filed deep,” Hogan said. “Gonna be tough to bring ’em up.”
“Well now, gee, that’s your job, ain’t it?” Ollie said, and hung up.
6
ANDY PARKERdidn’t particularly like being partnered with women, especially any woman who’d been hurt on the job. The way he understood it, Eileen Burke had been slashed while serving as an undercover decoy in a case she’d been working with the Rape Squad. Blue wisdom maintained she’d also been violated at the time, so to speak, but nobody talked about that because Burke had friends with short tempers, among them Bert Kling who Parker knew for a fact had been going steady with her when all this occurred. What went on between them—or even between her legs, for that matter—was none of his business. What happened on the job when you were partnered with someone who’d been cut or shot was another matter. They were never the same again, he knew that for a fact, too.
The man they were talking to this Wednesday night was a person Parker had been working with ever since February. His name was Francisco Palacios, and he owned and operated a cozy little shop that sold medicinal herbs, dream books, religious statues, numbers books, tarot cards, and other related items.
His silent partners, however, were named Gaucho Palacios and Cowboy Palacios, and they ran a shopbehindthe other shop, andthisone offered for sale various unrelated and medically approved “marital aids” like dildoes, French ticklers, open-crotch panties, plastic vibrators, leather executioners’ masks, chastity belts, whips with leather thongs, penis extenders, aphrodisiacs, inflatable life-sized female dolls, condoms in every color of the rainbow including vermilion, books on how to hypnotize and otherwise overcome reluctant women, ben wa balls in both plastic and gold plate, and a highly popular mechanical device guaranteed to bring satisfaction and imaginatively called Suc-u-lator.
Francisco, The Gaucho, and The Cowboy were in fact one and the same person, and they were collectively a police informer, a stoolie, a snitch, or in some quarters even a rat. At the back of El Castillo de Palacios, as The Gaucho called his bifurcated shop, he sat with the two detectives and tried to fill them in on what was about to come down next Tuesday night. He found it somewhat difficult to concentrate on business, however, because his eyes kept wandering to the redheaded detective’s crossed legs, and he kept wondering what it would be like to put her in a pair ofbragas sin entrepiernaand leather anklets studded with chrome.
The Gaucho wondered if she found him good-looking.
He himself thought he was one coolhombre.As tall and as lean as a matinee idol, with dark brown eyes and a mustache he hadn’t sported a year or so ago, he still wore his long black hair in a high pompadour, the way kids used to wear it in the fifties. He did not admit to having four wives because that was against the law—havingthem, notadmittingto having them. But none of them was redheaded. In fact, he had never been to bed with a redheaded woman in his life. He wondered if it was true that they were even more passionate than blondes. None of his wives was blond, either. Not really blond, anyway. He wondered if Eileen Burke here, with her splendidly crossedgambasand the faintest trace of a scar on her left cheek was, in fact, arealredhead. Does the carpet match the drapes, he wondered, or is she merely Miss Clairol’s cousin?
“What is going to happen next Tuesday at midnight,” he said, “is a very large quantity…”
“When you sayTuesdayat midnight,” Parker interrupted, “do you meanTuesdaynight when the…”
“Yes,” Palacios said.
“…clock strikes twelve…”
“Yes.”
“OrMondaynight when the clock strikes twelve?” Parker asked, cleaving the air with the edge of his hand.
Palacios looked at him.
“What I’m asking is…let’s say it’s eleven fifty-nineP.M., and then it’s midnight, and then the minute hand moves to twelve-ohone…is thisTuesdaynight we’re talking about, orMondaynight?”
“I am talking aboutTuesdayat midnight,” Palacios said. “It is eleven fifty-nine on Tuesday night, and then it is midnight, and then it is twelve-oh-one on Wednesday morning. The shit will go down on Tuesday night at midnight.”
“Wouldn’t it be easier to look at a calendar?” Eileen suggested.
Men, she thought.
There was, in fact, a calendar on the wall of The Gaucho’s shop, and it showed a picture of a dark-haired, spread-legged woman wearing nothing but an open Japanese fan. Palacios put his finger on the square for Wednesday, April 24. “This is today,” he said. He moved his finger down to the next row of dates. “And this is Tuesday, April thirtieth, the last day of the month. That is when the shit will go down. Tuesday night at midnight.”
“Is that clear, Eileen?” Parker asked.
She looked at him.
Palacios caught the glance.
Very nice, he thought, and wondered if she would care to be spanked by him some day.
Parker was thinking, Well, pardon me all to hell, lady, but these are not kindergarten kids we’re playing with here, and I would not like to show up a day late and a dollar short, and lose the whole damn bust, if you don’t mind. What he was afraid of, in fact, was that they’d break down the door next week and go down the basement steps, and Burke here would see a gun or even a box cutter and pick up her skirts and run right into everybody else in her haste to get out of there.
“These people are not amateurs,” he said aloud.
“They are very definitely not amateurs,” Palacios said, smiling at her to let her know he realized her partner here was being condescending merely because she was a ravishingly beautiful redhead he would love to take to bed sometime. “The ones selling the candy, anyway. They’ve been working on this deal for a long time now,” he said. “They are not going to like you going down their basement and messing with them.”
You can hardly see where she was cut, Parker thought. On the face, he understood. Psychologically bad, especially for a woman. Still, they did wonders with cosmetic surgery these days. And yet…
“Where is this basement of theirs?” Eileen asked.
“That’s one of the problems,” Palacios said.
“I didn’t know there were any problems,” Eileen said, and looked at Parker again.
“The problem is it keeps changing,” Palacios said.
“What keeps changing?”
“The basement where the dope is.”
“They keep moving the dope, is that what you mean?”
“So far, yes, it’s been in three different locations.”
“Why is that, do you suppose?”
“They’re being cautious,” Parker said.
“Careful,” Palacios agreed, nodding.
“They’re not amateurs,” Parker reminded her again.