"Fuck you." Danny stepped up and tapped Burroughs' large forehead with his gat. "Exert this, motherfuckah."
I had to hand it to him, that old spook Burroughs kept his head. He took off his glasses and closed his eyes like he was waiting to be sent to that big pharmacy in the sky.
"Danny," Wilma said, putting a hand on the boy's arm.
"Give him another $30,000," I said. "Stop playing Wesley Snipes every time something don't go your way, Danny. This is business."
He mumbled at me and Wilma and quietly put the gun away. Burroughs opened his eyes, and I swear for a second he looked disappointed. I counted out his bills and handed them over.
"I shall take care of everything on my end." He sat back, examining us like I'm sure he did when he was getting ready to cut a body open.
We split in Wilma's car, the bundles in the trunk. We were goddamn millionaires. We'd taken money from a dude that couldn't report it and who'd soon have even bigger worries to occupy his time. 'Course there was still his wild-ass cousin Rudy to deal with, but I wasn't sweatin' him right then. My cut was gonna be two, three million. I could get my thing going again, get myself set up sweet. Maybe I'd take over the Locker Room and franchise that bad rascal, then let the pussy and money roll in.
But something didn't feel right, and it wasn't just 'cause my best friend was lying on the slab.
Chapter 15
When I got back to my pad in Lennox, I grubbed on three cheeseburgers and two orders of fries I'd bought at the Jack-in-the-Box on Imperial. I had some Scotch left in the cupboard, and would have zonked out on coke if I had any I couldn't believe it but I was glad Wilma had hinted she was too tired for sex. The only thing I wanted was food and sleep.
As the sun came up, I went to bed and tried not to think about Nap. Or the fact that Wilma was sitting on the cash. She was the only one of us who had a safe place to keep it hidden.
For the next few days everything seemed to be happening in a world I was only a visitor to. I was too paranoid to stay at my shitty apartment but too broke to go anywhere else. Wilma had leaked information to the contact she had in the Justice Department before we did the robbery. The day after the job there was a piece in the L.A. Times Sports section about the charges coming down on Ellison Stadanko. And there was a story in the Metro section about the investigation aimed at Rudy Chekka, reputed mob boss.
That night I was sitting in the Proud Bird on Aviation watching the TV that hung over one comer of the bar. On the news was coverage of Stadanko at a press conference. He was with his lawyers and was denying everything. His old lady wasn't next to him.
A hand came down on my shoulder. ''Shame, isn't it?"
"Assholes always get what's due them, Fahrar." I drank my drink, not bothering to look at the chump.
"How you been keeping, partner?" He sat down on the stool next to me.
"I've been just fine, pardner." Now there was a piece about an ice-skating bear on the news. A chick at the other end of the bar cracked up at this. "I know you don't expect me to buy you a drink."
"That might be construed as a bribe." He took off his hat and placed it on the bar.
"Ain't there someplace else your half-breed ass can get a drink at?"
"And miss your witticisms?" He leaned over the bar and ordered. "Give me a rum and coke with a lime in it, okay?"
The bartender, a big-tittied woman with a weave that needed repair, nodded and made his drink. Fahrar sat there, watching TV and getting under my skin as she made his drink. She put it on the bar for him and he paid her. Cheap civil servant motherfuckah tipped her a quarter.
"Two men are sitting over in the jail ward of County Hospital." He slurped his drink.
Finally we were getting to it.
"As you must know, these Serbian gentlemen were pretty fucked up. One of them in particular has got a smashed pelvic bone, busted spleen, nuts hanging all low." He shook his head from side to side. "The poor bastard may never walk right again."
I finished my Maker's Mark but didn't want to order another one. No sense getting too loose and end up slipping with this nosy fuck. "Ain't that something. Man, you oughta write that up and sell it to Cops and Donuts Monthly."
Fahrar's yellow eye zeroed in on me over the top of his glass as he drank. "Naturally these tough boys aren't saying diddly. And their employer, Ellison Stadanko, claims no knowledge of what these ruffians could have been up to carrying firearms on the garbage truck. He's as perplexed as the rest of us why it is that five men, three of whom were in biohazard suits, were on one garbage truck."
"The Times had a piece today saying Stadanko may get jammed up by a grand jury." What the fuck, I ordered another Maker's.
"Since when you start reading the newspaper?"
I was gonna say, "Since your mama started bringing it to my crib in her teeth." Instead I came back with, "I always been into self-improvement."
"Like nine million worth? 'Cause that was the take you strokes pulled down, Zelmont. Stadanko is boxed in and is going to be sweating under the federal lights soon. That's smart, so smart I know your ducking and dodging self couldn't have thought it all out on your lonesome. No, it would take someone who had a knowledge of how to drop the right clue in the right back channel in the legal labyrinth of D.C."
"Really?" The bartender had turned the TV to a channel featuring a marble shooting championship. Damn.
"Did you know that Wilma Wells clerked in the law firm that Brooks Weems has in D.C.?"
He got a reaction that time. The surprise was all over my face.
"Yeah," the snake fuck smiled. "Brooks is the older brother of the football commissioner. Isn't that quite the coincidence?"
"Life is full of them, my mother always said." Come on, Zelmont, don't let this chump rattle you. But damn if he hadn't blindsided me. I sipped my drink and tried to look like I still had game.
"You seen Napoleon around lately?" He thumped his hat with his finger.
"Naw, you ask his brother?"
"He said he hadn't seen him for a few days. He said that maybe he might be back East on some kind of business, but he wasn't sure."
"There you go." The bartender had switched the channel again. Now there was a cop program playing with somebody I recognized. It was the Asian dude I'd done the shows on the WB with. The sound wasn't on but it seemed like he was the star. Good for him. We were all getting over.
"There was a fair amount of blood on the roadway, Zelmont. And quite a few spent shell casings too. And flash grenades. But you knew that."
"I did, huh?"
Fahrar had more of his booze. "Some of that blood matches Napoleon Graham's blood type."
He must have gotten Nap's medical record from the league. But so what? He didn't have a body. "I'm sure a lot of people match his blood type."
"How about his DNA?"
"You can cut it out, cop. I read in the paper the samples swabbed from the roadway were hard to break down. There's oil, gas, and what have you mixed in, plus the blood got absorbed into the asphalt. They quoted a biologist from UCLA who said all that debris or whatever messes up an exact match."
"Sounds like you studied that part of the article back and forth."
"Don't it?"
Fahrar got off the stool, holding the drink in one hand, his hat in the other. "When you see Napoleon, let him know I'd like to talk with him."
"Oh sure."
He looked at the glass in his hand like he'd lost the taste. He put the drink down, not finishing it. "Every step you take." He snugged his hat on his head and drifted out of the joint.