‘A few weeks ago Dantzler shows up with a new Ferrari. And he buys up my marker and generally settles up around town. So I ask him, “What did you do, hit a bank or something?” and what he says is this: “Tiffany and me found ourselves a turkey in a ten-gallon hat.” So I says, “Was Domino in on it?” And he says, “Don’t I wish I If I could get Domino in on it I could retire.” The figure I heard was fifty g’s. The way he was throwin’ money around, I believe it.’
‘So Domino was not in on it.’
‘I don’t know how to say it, but she was a very classy lady. I don’t think she’d get her hands dirty in that kind of action.’
‘Shit, she’s. . . she was a hooker, Leo.’
‘You asked me, I’m tellin’ you. If I was making book on this question, I would give odds she didn’t know a thing about it, and if she did, she would have given Dantzler the long goodbye.’
‘Could she maybe have found out about it and given Dantzler some trouble?’
‘I see where you’re goin’ with this. Let me tell you, this Dantzler’s got balls the size of a blackhead. Phony paper, pyramids, pimping, that’s his style. He don’t have the guts to step on an ant — or ask anybody else to. Anyway, even if he had it in mind, you know, he would have known to run it past me and I would have kicked his ass all the way to Alabama for even thinking about it. No, you can scratch Dantzler. He might be able to tell you why he thinks it was done, but he didn’t have a thing to do with it. That’s my opinion.’
‘So I end up exactly nowhere.’
‘No, you end up with a travellin’ hit man on your hands. If you want to come down on Dantzler, it’s going to have to be for something else.’
Papa nodded. ‘Okay. I want you to do this for me. I want you to listen around and if you hear anything, anything about this gambit., you give it to me. And if you hear anybody outside the Vice Squad askin’ questions about Domino or Dantzler or any of that crowd, you get on the horn to me.’
‘You want me to let you know if I get pneumonia from standing out here?’
‘You wanna run around half naked that’s your problem.’
‘Okay, but I got another problem.’
‘I’m listening.’
‘I got married a couple of weeks ago. Maybe you heard.’
‘You got a problem all right but there ain’t anything I can do about it.’
Leo laughed again. ‘It ain’t her, it’s her brother. He got dumped for running a red light and they turned up two lids of reefer in the car. It was strictly for personal use. The kid doesn’t push dope.’
‘Two ounces for personal use?’
‘So he smokes a lot, what do I know? He’s twenty. You know how it is when you’re twenty. You don’t do anything in moderation.’
‘You need to have a heart-to-heart with the kid.’
‘I already did. What it is, they hit him with felony possession.,
‘Anything over an ounce, the law says you’re pushing.’
‘Look, the kid’s okay. Anyway, I only been married a month, I’d like to give the old lady a little delayed wedding present, know what I mean?’
‘This kid’s first time out?
‘He got caught in a little bust here about a year ago. A bunch of kids were selling tax-free cigarettes they brought in from North Carolina. They must have cleared all of twenty bucks.’
‘Careless son of a bitch, isn’t he?
‘He’s not real bright.’
‘Okay. I got a pal just off the Narcs. I’ll talk to him.’
‘Whatever you can do.’
‘I can maybe work it out for a suspended sentence. He’ll have to do about six months probation or so, cough up a couple of yards for the fine.’
‘That’s okay. Maybe a little probation’ll straighten him out. I can handle the fine.’
‘Okay, Leo, we got a deal Just keep in touch. Keep your ear close to the ground for the next forty-eight hours or so.’
‘That’s cool.’
‘And forget you heard anything about Domino from me or anybody else.’
Leo’s eyebrows rose. ‘Who’s Domino?’
A harsh chilling wind had replaced the rain, turning dirt in the gutters into dervishes as Livingston cruised down the dark streets. Beside him, Sharky stared silently through the windshield, his mind assaulted by nightmare demons — the what ifs and maybes, all the ways he might have prevented Domino’s death. In the brief time he had seen her, talked to her, listened to her make love to another man, in those few hours she had touched a place deep inside him nobody had ever touched before. He knew it was crazy. But it was a reality he could not escape and the reality tortured him.
‘Okay,’ Livingston said after several minutes of silence, ‘what the hell’s eatin’ you?’
The question shook Sharky back to the present.
‘All of it,’ he said. ‘The whole thing.’
‘Got to kick that monkey, m’friend.’
‘Yeah.’
They drove another block without words.
‘1 got this, this, uh, lump in my gut, like a bad meal layin’ down there,’ Sharky said. ‘Like maybe I’m missing something.’
‘Hunch, hunh?’
‘Maybe. Yeah, could be that.’
‘Really got to you, didn’t she?’ Livingston said. ‘Got to thinkin’ about it, right? Wonderin’ what a five-hundred- dollar piece was like.’
Sharky felt himself bristling. It wasn’t like that, he felt like saying, but then he began thinking about it, remembering how he had felt, listening to her making love the night before. He felt cold and he huddled deeper into his suede pullover.
‘Yeah,’ he said finally, ‘she really got to rue.’
‘I been in Vice a long time, Shark. Too long. Seen lots of fancy tricksters come and go. I done my share of wondering, too. All of us have. I mean, if you didn’t think about it, it wouldn’t be natural.’
‘It’s more than that.’
‘What? You talkin’ about duty, that kinda shit? Listen here, you’re a cop, you ain’t God. You make mistakes just like everybody else. Only trouble is, in our business a man can take an extra cup of coffee, fall asleep at the wrong moment, make a bad guess, it ends up disaster for somebody. You learn to live with it or get out. You’re gonna make a fuckin’ mistake now and then, you can’t afford to, but you’re gonna make ‘em anyway. Couple of years ago a friend of mine named Tibbets lost a material witness. They had this cat under protective custody in a house off Highland Avenue and it all started comin’ down on this guy, y’know, he got the shivers. So one night he goes to the can and hangs himself in the shower. Tibbets is twenty feet away watchin’ a ball game. He never got over it, started in drinkin’, two months later he blew his brains out. So what did that prove? We had already lost a witness. The court case went down the toilet. Then we lost a good cop and for what? We all human, baby. You start thinkin’ otherwise, you’re in deep trouble.’
‘Keep reminding me of that, will you?’
‘Okay. For now just put it aside. She’s dead, man. That boat’s sailed. What we need to be doin’ sight now is figure out where we goin’, not where we been.. Now would you like to hear a thought?’
‘Anything at all.’
‘These Mafiosi are usually big gamblers. It goes with the territory, y’know. Comes to me that maybe this shooter’s found himself some local action. There ain’t that many bookies around and if he’s a heavy player, maybe we can get a line on him.’
‘Terrific. Only trouble is, I wouldn’t know where to place a fifty-cent bet on anything right now.’
‘Well, I know a few bookmakers. What I’m gonna do,
I’m gonna quietly check with Whit Ramsey on the Gaming Squad, see if any new bookies are operatin’. Maybe we can shake somethin’ outa their pockets.’
‘Let’s get it on then,’ Sharky said. ‘Pull over to that phone booth. You can touch base with Whit, I’ll call Barret and see if he’s turned up anything at the lab.’