‘Listen here, Zipper, and listen good. I ain’t interested in your goddamn players. We’re talking about murder.’
Zipper looked startled.
‘That’s right,’ Livingston said. ‘Murder. Now you keep your fuckin’ yap shut until I finish. Cat I’m after is white. He’s an outfit hitman, can you dig that? Last night this son-bitch burned a very nice lady. He’s a fuckin’ lady-killer. And you givin’ me all this shit about protectin’ his ass?’
Zipper said nothing. He stared into his champagne glass. ‘This motherfucker woulda come into town a couple weeks ago. If he is a gamblin’ man, he’d be a big gamblin’ man. Sports, ponies, any national shit. Now you don’t know anything about such a cat, okay. But if you do, Zipper, I got to know about it, ‘cause man, we talkin’ about rough trade here.’
‘How come you so fuckin’ sure this dude gambles?
‘I’m not. It’s a hunch. But right now it’s all I got.’
The car was quiet. Zipper cleared his throat. Then the phone rang again.
‘Go ahead and talk,’ Livingston said, ‘I know you’re a bookie. What the shit you so shy about?’
Zipper yanked the phone off the hook. ‘Hello . . . Yeah, this Zipper. What it is?. . . It’s Dallas and seven. . . Well, that’s tough shit, turkey. That’s the fuckin’ spread and ain’t nothin I can do about it. . . . Listen here, motherfucker, I don’t make the odds. You don’t like it, put your fuckin’ money back in your goddamn shoe. Now, you want some action or don’t you? . . . Well, fuck you too, nigger.’ He slammed down the phone.
Silence again.
Finally Zipper said, ‘Only one possibility. Only one possibility. Cat can’t be your man. Can’t be.’
‘Who says?’
‘I say. He makes book in a fag bar out Cheshire Bridge Road.’
‘A fag bar?’
‘That’s right. This tough-nuts shooter you talkin’ about queer?’
‘Who is he?’
‘Shit, I told ya, nigger. I don’t have no truck with any of those fuckers personally. This joint, it’s called, uh.. . this stays with us, that right?’
‘C’mon, Zipper.’
‘This joint is called, uh, the Matador. Got this pansy. lookin’ bullfighter on the sign out front.’
‘I know the place.’
‘‘Bout five weeks ago my bookie friend out there, you know — he does nickel and dime shit out there, nothin’ big, mostly local games — anyways, he calls me, says, do I want to take a layoff on the Oakland and Miami game? Fucker took the spread for five grand and lost his ass. Next week he’s back again. Motherfucker doubles up, lays out ten grand on some NFL game and a basketball game, and splits. Been goin’ like that ever since. Five, ten g’s a clip. Right now I’m into him for about five thou.’
‘When’s the last time he bet?
‘Yesterday.’
‘Yesterday?’
‘You heard right, yesterday. He bettin’ on the playoff. Took Dallas and the points over Minnesota. Ten big ones.’
‘Zipper, I got to know who this player is.’
‘No fuckin’ way.’
‘Just the name, man.’
‘No motherfuckin’ way. Shit, I told ya. I don’t even know who it is. The bookie deals with the score and I deal with the bookie.’
‘Okay, who’s the bookie then?’
‘C’mon, goddammit. You lean on him, he’s gonna know I done it to him.’
‘I’ll cover your ass. Don’t you worry about that. I ain’t interested in the fuckin’ bookie. I want his mark.’
‘You got to cover my ass, Livingston. Tell you somethin’. You come clown on this little motherfucker, he gonna die on the spot.’
‘I’ll do it right, man. Who is it?
‘The bartender. Name’s Arnold.’
Livingston sighed. ‘Jesus,’ he said, ‘that was worse than pickin’ cotton with your goddamn feet.’
‘Just don’t fuck me over on this, hear? And don’t come back with any more of this snitch shit either. I done made my contribution for life.’
Livingston started to get out of the car. ‘Shit, motherfucker,’ he said, ‘my eyes couldn’t stand any more of this pussywagon.’
Zipper’s eyes flared. ‘Pussywagon, Pussywagon! Shit, you fuckin’ no-class nigger, this car cost fifty grand. Fifty fuckin’ thousand goddamn dollars. Ain’t no goddamn Detroit pussywagon. Shit, I don’t even scratch my balls when I’m in this machine. You hear me, Livingston?’
But the policeman was gone, down through the fire door towards the bowling alley below.
‘Pussywagon, my ass,’ Zipper growled, then he leaned out the door. ‘Steamboat!’
‘Yeah, boss.’
‘Take that fuckin’ dumbass to the Gradys and get his head stitched up and then fire his ass.’
At four A.M., Friscoe quit for the night. He drove home, grumbling to himself, angry because he had turned up nothing at all in six hours of hard work. His back ached and his eyes burned as he entered the house, passing up his customary raid on the refrigerator and going straight to the bedroom. He went into the bathroom and closed the door before turning on the light so as not to awaken Sylvia, splashed cold water on his face, and sat on the commode to take off his shoes. He sighed with relief as be dropped them on the floor, then went back to the bedroom and sat on the edge of the bed, bone weary and almost too tired to get undressed.
His wife rolled over and said sleepily, ‘Barney?’
‘No, it’s Robert Redford,’ he said wearily.
‘Oh, how nice.’
‘If he was as tired as I am, you could forget it.’
‘What time is it’?’
‘Past four. I’m dead. My feet feel like I just ran the Boston Marathon.’
‘You would’ve been proud of Eddie, Barney. He did just fine.’
‘Jeez, I completely forgot. Did you explain? Did it embarrass him I had to leave like that, right in the middle of Prokofiev?’
‘He understood. Nobody saw from the stage; they were very busy.’
The lieutenant pulled and tugged at his clothes until they lay in a pile at his feet, then he fell back on the bed in his:
undershorts.
‘Jesus, Syl, there’s got to be an easier way to make a living.’
‘Uh huh.’
‘It never ends. You clean up one, there’s two more in its place.’
She rose on one elbow and rubbed his temple with two fingers.
‘You been saying that since the day we got married,’ she said.
But Friscoe did not hear her. His breathing had already, settled into a steady drone. Sylvia got up and puffed the covers over him and went into the bathroom.
A moment later the phone rang.
Before she could get back to it, Friscoe, from years of experience, reached out and answered it without opening his eyes.
‘Barney?
‘Umm.’
‘Is that you, Friscoe?
‘Uh.. . yeah.’
‘It’s Max Grimm. You awake?’
‘Almost. . . uh, you finish the autopsy?
‘Oh, on the girl? Abrams got that hours ago. I’ve got something else you ought to know about. Are you listening?’
‘Yeah, yeah.’
‘You remember, I told you Riley had a couple of John Does down here in the icehouse?’
‘Right.’
‘Well, I just finished the post mortem on one of them.’
‘Christ, what the hell time is it?’
‘Who knows? I been going so long I can’t stop now. Anyway, this p.m. I just finished? They found the corpse out in the city dump yesterday afternoon. A real messy thing. Face blown off, both hands are missing.’
‘Hands missing?’
‘Yeah, cut off at the wrist. No clothes, no I.D., nothing.’
‘Twigs, I got one too many bodies on my hands already.’
‘Listen to me. Like I say, his face was blown off, nothing left, no way to identify him, okay?’
‘Um hmm.’
‘But that isn’t what killed him. He was drilled through the right eye. A single .22 calibre long rifle-bullet, with the end dum-dummed. It flattened out and laid up against the back of the skull on the inside.’
‘So?’
‘So the bullet was soaked in garlic.’