“Will you let me know if you learn anything?”
“I’ll call you right away,” he said.
“I hate him for this,” she said out of the blue.
THE BAR TWO BLOCKSfrom the Eighty-seventh Precinct station house was called Shanahan’s. At four-thirty that afternoon, forty-five minutes after the day watch was relieved, Eileen Burke and Andy Parker met there with Francisco Palacios, who was not too terribly tickled to be seen in a place where so many cops went for drinks after work. The Gaucho liked to keep a low profile.
On the other hand, if he was involved in the business of supplying information to the police, would he be doing it so blatantly out in the open? Mindful of the fact that another person in his profession—an informer named Danny Gimp—had been killed in a public place while sharing coffee and chocolate eclairs with yet another detective from the Eight-Seven, Palacios kept a roving eye on the people coming in and out of Shanahan’s, lest he, too, be cold-cocked for no reason whatsoever.
He was here this evening to tell Parker and Eileen what he had learned about the drug deal that would go down this Tuesday at midnight. The date and the time hadn’t changed. Neither had the names of the principal players. But he was now able to give them with some degree of certainty the exact location of the impending transaction.
“The thing is she’s being very careful, this woman,” he said. “I think she got burned once before, really bad, by some sharpies up from Miami, so she wants to make sure nobody does it to her again. Five times already, she changed the location. It’s always a basement, she likes to do business in basements cause nobody can get in and out too fast if they have to run up and down steps. When the Miami guys took her, it was on a rooftop. She figured a rooftop would be safe,verdad?Instead, she handed over the crack and next thing you know she’s looking at half a dozen Glocks and the Miami guys are jumping over to the next roof, and it’s so long, see you on the beach, honey. Ever since then, it’s basements, does anybody want another beer?”
“I’m fine,” Eileen said.
“I could use one,” Parker said.
Palacios signaled to the waiter, who slouched over to the table and took their order for two fresh brews. A pair of heavy-looking guys came through the front door, and Palacios gave them the once-over, but they turned out to be two off-duty cops who went over to join some buddies at another table. Eileen was still trying to find out a little bit more about this mysterious deal that was about to happen in some mysterious basement.
“Who are the players here?” she asked. “You say they haven’t changed, so who are they?”
“I think you had traffic before with the lady selling the crack,” Palacios said. “You remember a black woman named Rosita Washington, she’s half-Spanish?”
Eileen shook her head. “Who are the buyers?”
“Three guys who are total amateurs,” Palacios said. “They’re the ones who are dangerous. Ah,gracias, señor,” he said to the waiter, and immediately picked up his beer mug. Tilting it in Eileen’s direction, he said, “To the beautiful lady,” and drank. Eileen acknowledged the toast dead-panned. “The three of them think all black people are stupid,” Palacios said, “but if they try to rip off Rosie Washington, there’s gonna be real trouble, I can tell you.”
“All black peoplearestupid,” Parker said, not for nothing was he a close friend of Ollie Weeks.
“Not as stupid as these three jerks, believe me,” Palacios said. “You heard of The Three Stooges? Shake hands with these guys. I don’t know how they raised the three hundred thou they need for the deal,ifthey raised it. But I can tell you, if they go in empty-handed they’re dead on the platter. Rosie ain’t gonna get stiffed a second time.”
“Who are they?” Eileen asked.
“Three jackasses named Harry Curtis, Constantine Skevopoulos, and Lonnie Doyle. You know them?”
“No,” Parker said.
“No,” Eileen said.
“Grifters from the year one. Which is why I think they might try to rip off Rosie, in which case run for cover,niños,run for cover. Thing you should do, you want my advice, is go down the basement, yell ‘Cops, freeze!’ and bust all of them before any shooting starts. You nail Rosie for possession of the coke, and you nail the three dopes for tryin’a buy it, is my advice.”
“Thanks,” Parker said drily.
“Where is this basement?” Eileen asked.
“3211 Culver. Between Tenth and Eleventh.”
“I gotta pee,” Parker said, and rose, and headed for the men’s room. One of the heavy-looking guys who’d come in earlier walked over to the juke box, put some coins in it, and pushed some buttons. Sinatra came out singing “It Was a Very Good Year.” You didn’t hear Sinatra too often these days. Eileen missed him. She sat listening, swaying in time with the music. He was singing now about city girls who lived up the stairs.
“Do you like to dance?” Palacios asked.
“Yes, I like to dance,” she said.
“You want to come dancing with me sometime?”
She looked at him.
“No, I don’t think so,” she said.
“Why not? I’m a very good dancer.”
“I don’t doubt it, Cowboy.”
“So?”
“You also have four wives.”
“Had,”Palacios said. “Past tense. Had. I’m divorced now. Four times.”
“Terrific recommendation,” Eileen said.
“Come on, we go dancing one night.”
“Cowboy, we’ve got enough on you to send you away for twenty years.”
“So? Meanwhile, we go dancing.”
“I’m a cop,” Eileen said.
“So? Cops don’t dance?”
“Let it go, Cowboy.”
“I’ll ask you again.”
She looked at him another time. She was thinking he was handsome as hell, and she hadn’t been to bed with anyone for the past six months now, and she’d heard Hispanic lovers were the cat’s ass, so why not go dancing one night? She was also thinking you don’t get involved with guys on the other side of the law, this man would be doing time at Castleview if we hadn’t let him walk in exchange for his services. So thanks, Cowboy, she thought.
“Thanks, Cowboy,” she said, “but no.”
Parker was back.
“Lay it out for me one more time,” he told Palacios.
OH SHIT, Suzie thought, it’s about to get complicated again.
Just when I dared hope things would stay clear and simple forever, Harry brings his dumb-ass friends home with him again, and they’re sitting there in the living room playing cards at eight o’clock at night, and talking about their next brilliant scheme to make a million dollars without having to work for it.
The last time they had a great idea was four weeks ago, when they decided to stick up a floating crap game in Diamondback. Twelve humongous black guys in the game, any one of them could’ve broken these three wimps in half without lifting a finger, they decide to go stick it up. What happened was it was raining that night, and the game got called off, which was lucky for her husband and his pals, or there would’ve been three broken heads around here. So now they were planning another one of their grand capers, but maybe—if they got lucky again—it would rain again and save them a lot of heartache and grief.
She sometimes wondered why she stayed married to Harry Curtis. Sometimes wondered, in fact, why she’d married him in the first place. Well, she always did go for big men. Suzie Q, they used to call her when she was in her teens—well, some of her friends still called her that. Short for Suzie Quinn. Now she was Susan Q. Curtis, twenty-three years old and married to a man who was twice her age and big all over, including his ideas.