‘Step inside,’ DeLaroza said. Lowenthal got into the ball and settled into the soft leather seat. DeLaroza closed the door. The top half was open so that the rider had a clear view out of the round car.
‘Now imagine Man Chi, here, firing this ball into that tunnel in front of you. You drop down a chute to the floor below, which is an enormous pinball field. Bumpers, lights, tunnels, mirrors. The car rolls freely on ball bearings, it never turns upside down and the speed is electronically controlled by an operator who sits in the middle of the pachinko board. Once it leaves the chute here, it is on its own. Only the speed is controlled, so it does not fly out of control. Otherwise it bounces from bumper to bumper up to thirty miles an hour at times before it drops through another chute and arrives on the first floor . . . where your attendant hands you your car keys.’
Above the entrance tunnel was a large replica of the pachinko board itself, an electronic grid on which a blip followed the course of the ball, lighting up the bumpers and registering the score on a digital counter.
DeLaroza helped Lowenthal from the ball. ‘Now come along,’ he said.
He led the way from the entrance to the ride, along a narrow alley and through a fire door. A flight of steps led down to a second door, which opened onto the field itself. Its walls were mirrored. Strobe lights flashed intermittently and the bumpers gleamed gaudily. It was the bumpers that intrigued Lowenthal, for they were like a vast field of strange statues, each in the shape of a Chinese deity.
DeLaroza strode out on the board, and was immediately dwarfed by the jazzy hardware of the giant pinball machine. He pointed first to this bumper, then that, talking continually.
‘This is Shou-Hsing, the god of long life. I call him the laughing god. That one, the serene one, is Lu-Hsing, the god of salaries. Over there, that fat one? Who else but the god of wealth, Ts’ai-Shen? And this lady here, this is Kuan-Yin, goddess of mercy and compassion. Forty-two bumpers in all, enough to satisfy even the most masochistic thrill-seeker. The ball makes one complete revolution of the board here at thirty miles an hour before it rolls through that chute up there. The box in the centre is the control- board. One man can control three balls. On opening night, of course, we will shoot them through one at a time.’
He turned and looked at Lowenthal. It was indeed a fitting climax for Pachinko!
‘Well,’ DeLaroza said grandly, ‘now what do you think?’
Lowenthal held his hands out at his sides, palms up. ‘What can I say? It is the definitive fantasy. Congratulations.’
Obviously pleased, DeLaroza led him back to the main floor of the park.
‘And now,’ he said, ‘we shall enjoy the crème de la crème. Wan Shu is waiting. Now that we have excited your emotions, we shall do the same for your palate.’
Chapter Thirteen
Barney Friscoe stormed through the lobby of the Lancaster Towers West with Papa trotting at his side. The security guard watched them enter and came out of his office with his eyebrows arched into question marks.
Papa managed a lame smile. ‘Superintendent,’ he said, pointing to Friscoe, whose face looked like a volcano about to erupt.
Everything hunky-dory up there?’ the guard said, with a touch of panic in his voice.
‘Fine, fine,’ Papa said, ‘nothin’ to worry about. Routine.’ They got into the elevator. The guard watched the door shut and finally shrugged and returned to his television set.
‘What’s this “superintendent” shit?’ Friscoe snapped.
‘A cover. He thinks we’re workin’ on the elevators,’ Papa said.
‘The elevators? Jesus H. Christ, Papa, this better be important, that’s all I got to say, puffin’ me outa the symphony, right in the middle of Prokofiev. And Lieutenant Kije at that! My oldest kid made third chair tonight, you understand that? It’s important.’
Papa said nothing.
‘A fantastic programme, we got Brahms, we got Schubert, and we got Prokofiev! And there I am, third row centre.’ Friscoe, who -was wearing a tuxedo, pulled his velvet tie loose and opened the top button of his shirt as the elevator stopped.
‘To the right, first door on the right,’ Papa said.
Friscoe stomped down the hail, muttering to himself. ‘This better be good. This better be fingerfuckinlickin’ good.’
Friscoe hammered on the door to 10-A.
‘Who is it?’ Livingston asked from inside.
‘It’s Little Red Riding Hood, for Chrissakes, who do you think it is? Open the goddamn door.’
The chain rattled and Livingston swung the door partially open. Friscoe charged through it without looking to the right or left. He came face to face with Sharky and The Nosh. Friscoe stood in front of them, his hands on his hips and his tie dangling like black crêpe paper from his open collar.
‘Awright,’ Friscoe bawled, ‘what the fuck’s so urgent you jokers get me outa the symphony right on the dime, when in ten more minutes I could’ve sneaked out between numbers and nobody woulda been the wiser? I had to crawl over half of Atlanta society to —,
Livingston was tapping him on the shoulder and at the same moment Sharky pointed back toward the door. Friscoe spun around.
‘What the hell do you —, he said, and stopped in mid- sentence.
He saw the bloody pattern near the ceiling, the splash of blood on the wall where the force of the shot had thrown her, the streaks down to the crumpled body below.
A gaunt spider of a man was leaning over her, examining the body.
‘Terrible for the blood pressure, Barney, blowing up like that,’ the gaunt man said quietly.
‘Holy shit!’ Friscoe said, half under his breath. He took a few steps towards the corpse and stopped. His face contorted. He swallowed hard, shuddered, looked at Livingston, back at Sharky, and then at the corpse again.
‘What the fuck. . . who is it? What happened here?’
Sharky started to speak but his voice cracked and he stopped to clear his throat. Livingston finally spoke up. ‘It’s the Domino woman,’ he said. The words cut deep into Sharky’s gut when he heard them said aloud.
‘Domino!’ Friscoe said.
‘Yeah.’
Friscoe’s eyes widened. ‘So what happened?’
The gaunt man, his hands encased in blood-covered surgeon’s plastic gloves, looked up at him. ‘Somebody aced the lady,’ he said in a voice that sounded tired.
‘I ain’t blind,’ Friscoe bellowed. ‘What I wanna know is, what happened?’
‘What happened, Sharky’s on the roof monitoring the bugs,’ Livingston said. ‘She got away from us this morning and was out most of the day. About seven-forty there was a call from somebody named Pete saying he would be late and would call back. She came in at seven-forty-four. Two minutes later another call. Whoever it was hung up. At seven-fifty-eight the doorbell rang, she opened the door and’ — he nodded towards the corpse. ‘Couple more things. She was packing her suitcase when she got hit. It’s in there on the bed. Then about fifteen minutes after . . . it happened. . . there was another call. We let the machine answer it. It was this Pete again. I picked it up, but he hung up as soon as he heard my voice.’
The gaunt man stripped off his gloves, put a hand on his knee, and stood up. And up. And up. He was a shade over six-foot-six, thin as a stalk of wheat, his clothes hanging from bony shoulders like rags on a scarecrow. His complexion was the colour of oatmeal, his hair — what there was of it — the colour of sugared cinnamon. The bones in his long, angular face strained against wafer-thin skin. His long needle fingers seemed as brittle as the limbs of a dead bush. Art Harris, one of the city’s better reporters, had once profiled him thus: ‘Max Grimm, the Fulton County coroner, is a cadaverous stalk of twigs who looks worse than many of his subjects . . .‘ The description provided Grimm with his nickname, Twigs. At sixty-seven he had been coroner for forty-one years and had managed to stave off compulsory retirement at sixty-five with the excuse that he was suffering some vague terminal disorder and wanted to work as long as possible at the job he had held for almost two-thirds of his life. Nobody believed him, but that was immaterial. He was too good to retire anyway.