‘.-. quick and easy. I don’t torture people there, Vic. It ain’t my style. But the second before I squeezed it off, that’s when it felt best. Waitin’ just for that fraction of a second when they’re between heaven and hell. You think that ain’t power?’
DeLaroza said, ‘Yes, I suppose so.’
Burn’s lip curled back revealing his yellowing teeth Suddenly there was hate burning in his eyes, too. ‘Ya know somethin’, Vic old boy? I was thinkin’, on the way back over here with that Chink friend of yours. All these years I been hearin’ about what a hot shit you are. Big brain. You been pullin’ the strings, playin’ the big cheese all over the world. You had me believin’ all that shit, y’know. But if it wasn’t for me, you wouldn’t be nothin’. Just another dumb yokel kissin’ ass someplace to get a five dollar raise. And when your eyes turned white, when you needed somebody pull the ol’ trigger, you hadda come cryin’ to me. When the tit was in the wringer, who did the dirty work? Me. And don’t you forget it.’
‘I never —,
‘Don’t say nothin’, pal. Just put it in your scrapbook. Oh yeah, only one other thing, buddy-boy. There was a cop in the place.’
‘A cop?’
‘Take it easy. Don’t panic. He was on the premises somewhere. I don’t know exactly where. He was on top of me, just Like that. I can’t figure it out exactly. The shots, you couldn’t hear twenty feet away. But be come into that stairwell three, four floors above me, like a bat outa hell.’
‘Are you sure it wasn’t the security guard?’
‘Maybe, but that ain’t what he said. He said police. “Stop, police!” That’s the words he used. And he wasn’t wearing no uniform. I still can’t figure it out. Anyways he was yellin’ and runnin’, and I kept on rollin’, out on the terrace there. I was reloaded already when the motherfucker came out. He was ten feet from me once. A young guy in suede jacket carrying some kind of 9mm piece. All he hadda do was turn around once there, and pow, right in the gut. He was in a hurry though. I walked away from it clean. Nobody saw nothin’, nobody beard nothin’, just this fuckin’ pig.’
Worms crawled deep in DeLaroza’s gut. Burns was paranoid and it crept over him, suffocating him like a blanket.
‘Pachinko! opens Monday night. Tuesday you go to Vancouver on my JetStar. That night you’re on your way to Yokohama. Do not worry about the pimp. I’ll take care of that.’
‘Did you take care of that bet for me?’
‘Ten thousand on Dallas.’
‘How about the spread?’
‘Seven points.’
‘Good. So, the wine’s beginning to get to me. Don’t catch your asshole on the doorknob, okay?’
‘Yes,’ DeLaroza said and after he had left the apartment he leaned against the wall and closed his eyes, breathing like a man who bad just run a very long way.
Chapter Fifteen
It was the hour of the ravens and Sharky’s Machine prepared to invade the heart of darkness, seeking among the bookies, gamblers, pushers, strongarms, prostitutes, con- men, muggers and killers, those who could be cajoled or threatened into revealing the secrets of the night people.
Time. Time was against them. The hour was right, but the clock was their enemy. For though Friscoe had joined them (at first reluctantly, then after the discovery of the fingerprints, enthusiastically) they all knew the chase would end with Monday morning roll call. He would not be pushed farther than that.
‘Remember,’ a wise old cop told them, ‘never trust a snitch. They’re lepers. Give a squealer a piece of confidential info, he’ll try to sell it to your partner twenty minutes later. You got to catch ‘em with their hands full, get ‘em on the hook, or needing help, then you can maybe trust ‘em — for at least thirty seconds.’
The wise old cop was Friscoe, who operated on the theory that no matter how experienced his men were, no matter how much they knew, it never hurt to repeat good advice.
The plan was devised in Domino’s apartment: Work fast, dig up what you can, bring in any scraps you get, rendezvous at the Majestic Grill at seven in the morning to begin putting the pieces together.
‘Just don’t waste time,’ Friscoe said. ‘If you gotta lead and it starts to crap out, get off it, move to something else. What we ain’t got, we ain’t got time, see, to beat on any dead dogs. Let’s see what a night’s digging turns up. We ain’t got anybody on base by morning, I say we flush it.’
Barret and Grimm beaded to their respective laboratories. By ten P.M. Twigs had gathered up the remains of the victim in a body bag and moved it by freight elevator and his own station wagon to the morgue, where he eagerly went to work, prying into its vital organs.
Barret, alone in his lab working under a single lamp, pored over the scraps of physical evidence beginning with the little red pill.
The Nosh returned to the OC, there to wire the two fingerprints from the top and underside of the commode handle to the FBI in Washington and to begin filtering out whatever voices existed on Sharky’s tapes.
Friscoe hastily drafted a vice cop named Johnny Cooper and went in search of Tiffany Paris, hoping to begin an interrogation which might lift the veil of the mysterious Domino.
The apartment was sealed. Sharky would return later to check it out. For now, he would go with Livingston looking for information. The time was right.
Papa, who preferred to work alone, quietly went hunting. As did Sharky and Livingston, cruising the night haunts, searching out the weak among the vipers.
Disco music thundered at Papa as he entered Nefertiti, the city’s most hallowed night spot — at least for that week. Two leads had already gone down the toilet. Now he was looking for Leo Winter, a good old boy with an easy grin whose casual charm had dazzled more than one jury. There was only one problem -. Papa had nothing in his pocket. Right now Leo was clean. It would have to be a bluff and Papa was not the best poker player in the world.
The maitre d’, sartorially splendid in a cocoa-coloured tuxedo, stood at the inner entrance to the club, dwarfed by a tall image of the Egyptian queen that stared enigmatically down at the lobby through gleaming emerald eyes. He eyed Papa sceptically, starting at the black tie-up shoes, the rumpled suit, the faded blue shirt, and the outrageous tic which did not go with anything else he had on. His patronizing smile never went beyond his lips.
‘Sorry, sir, full up in there,’ he said. ‘Could be thirty, forty minutes before there’s any room in the bar. You might like to try a little place up the street —,
‘I got a reservation,’ Papa said and flashed his shield.
The maitre d’ looked distressed. ‘is there going to be trouble?
‘1 don’t know. Are you expecting some?’ Papa said and went into the club.
The interior was outrageous. The decor was Egyptian with music surging from enormous amplifiers hidden in two mummy cases at each end of the large room. Brass palm trees shimmered before its onslaught, hieroglyphics decorated the sconces, and the announcer worked the control- board with the frenzy of a concert pianist, his booth nestled between the paws of an enormous sphinx that dominated one end of the room. Spotlights roved the club, while the dance floor, illuminated from below, seemed to pulsate with the beat of the music.
The place was jammed but Leo Winter was easy to spot. He was on the dance floor, moving casually with the beat, dancing with a blonde whose gothic chest, wrapped in see-through cotton, jogged in rhythm with the music.
Winter, a triangle of a man with bullish shoulders, hardly any waist, and large hands, was dressed in a yellow leisure suit, brocaded at the collar and open to the waist, a gold chain with a charm the size of a manhole cover bouncing around his neck. As one record segued into another Winter and the woman returned to their table beside the dance floor. His eyes made an alert sweep of the room, passed Papa, then flicked back and lingered on him for a moment. The big cop jerked his head towards the door, turned, and went outside.