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.