Nurse Horn attended to him as she had all of his friends when they had wounds, bruises, and breaks. Bell died from his injury and Juanita stayed on, the visiting nurse to those who couldn’t afford the exposure of an emergency room. She was as good as most general practitioners, and better because she knew when the wounds and maladies were beyond her abilities.
“The kid uses needles,” Nightly said in a subdued tone. “Got hep and who knows what else? Fever’s bad. We were going to take him to the doctor but Juanita said that he won’t die right away, and he’s been saying things that you might want to know.”
I bobbed my head to show that I understood and moved next to Sister Juanita. She understood the gesture and stood so that I could hunker down next the boy.
“Tally,” I said as if calling into anther room.
When he opened his eyes I recoiled at the bright yellow beaming from them.
“She sent me to meet with him,” Tally said, almost out of his mind with fever. “Sent me to tell them that Chrystal needs money, lotsa money if they want her to let up on her share of the inheritance, if they didn’t want her to go to the cops.”
“Chrystal said that?” I asked.
“What?” Tally was looking in my direction, but it was a toss-up whether he saw me or not. “What you say?”
“Chrystal said to ask for the money?”
“No, man. Chrystal loves that murderin’ fool. Chrystal’s crazy. Don’t even know what’s good for her.”
“Shawna?” I asked.
“I’m sick,” Tally said, looking into my eyes with sudden awareness. “Am I dyin’?”
“Did Shawna ask you to ask for money for Chrystal?”
When the boy exhaled it sounded like a last breath. It stank, too. The disease was deep in his blood and lungs, skin and eyes. He passed out and Juanita shouldered me aside. She poured alcohol on a white towel and dabbed it on his face.
“He’s a sick puppy,” Luke Nye said. “I’m scared just to look at him.”
“Rich man killed his sister, and if he’s saying what I think, he might be next on the list.”
“If somebody wants to kill him,” Johnny said, “he better hurry up before the kid does it himself.”
“Did he mention any names?” I asked Luke.
“No, just said a guy killed his sister. Said it was in the paper. I thought you might wanna know.”
“Thanks.”
“Let’s go across the hall,” Luke said.
Johnny and I followed him out.
Room 4C DOUBLED as an office. There was a cedar desk and chair next to the window and a round maple table with five chairs in the middle of the room. Carpeting was burgundy and the walls champagne. Luke and I sat while Johnny brought out glasses and a crystal decanter filled with fifty-year-old bourbon.
“What you want me to do, LT?” Luke asked.
This was one of those rooms scattered around New York and the world where anything could be decided. If I wanted them to let Tally die and then to be buried somewhere where he’d never be found, that would be it.
“I’d like to talk to him but I’m afraid it’d kill him,” I said.
“Juanita probably could do somethin’ bring him around long enough to get some answers,” Johnny said before sipping at his glass.
“No,” I said. “No. Call an ambulance and say you found him at the door. Say he came to the place and collapsed or something. Take his ID if he has any and let a doctor see to him. By the time he wakes up, if he ever does, the whole thing’ll be over.”
“So that’s it?” Luke said, straightening his shoulders to get up and go.
“One more thing.”
“What’s that?”
“Johnny works for you, right?”
“Uh-huh.”
“So what do I have to do to ask him to come do a job for me?” It was a difficult question. People like us had certain protocols when it came to business relationships. Betrayal was the worst sin anyone could commit, and so I asked the question with both Luke and Johnny at the table.
“Johnny’s a free agent,” Luke said, giving me that prehistoric smile he has.
“What you need, LT?” Johnny Nightly, a killer almost as dangerous as Hush, asked me.
“It might be a little risky.”
“And here I thought you wanted a babysitter.”
All three of us grinned and Johnny poured another round.
44
Johnny and I exchanged numbers before he accompanied Luke down to the basement where the men spent most of their time. Luke’s pool hall was one of the most exclusive on the Eastern Seaboard — intended for a rarefied clientele. The greatest hustlers in the world came to play on his perfectly balanced tables. Millions of dollars changed hands in that room each year, and seven percent of that went to the house.
Before leaving, I went back to the sick room to see what shape Tally was in. He looked dead but I knew he wasn’t because Sister Juanita was still dabbing his forehead with alcohol.
I made a sound and Juanita looked up and over, pinning me in place with eyes that had seen more death and suffering than many a mercenary. She was still beautiful in spite of the sixty-some years spread across acres of death.
“Did he say any other names?” I asked.
“Only the ones you already heard.”
“What’re his chances?”
“I seen worse. Much worse. But you know, Leonid, some people die from a cold, others lived through Hiroshima.”
I smiled, and she did, too — for a brief instant.
“I hear you got Gordo up at your place,” she said.
“Yeah.”
“How is he?”
“Stomach cancer. Doctor doesn’t see much hope.”
“What about Gordo?”
“You mean, how does he see his chances?”
She nodded.
“You know ole Gord, he believe in fightin’ till the last round.”
She smiled and said, “He would have survived that A-bomb, unless they dropped it right on his head.”
Going down the stairs, it came back to me, the year-long affair between Gordo Tallman and Juanita Horn. She’d been called to the gym one day because a Dominican boxer with questionable documentation had fallen badly while sparring. He refused to go to the hospital and Juanita was brought in to set the broken ankle.
For the next twelve months Gordo and Juanita were just about inseparable. And then Gordo shut her out. I was working the heavy bag the day she’d come crying from his office. The gossip was that Juanita had spent a weekend with an old friend of Bell’s, that Gordo found out and cut her off. I never knew for a fact. I didn’t want to know.
Angelique Arabesque’s white Cadillac stood in front of Luke’s place. She was Luke’s driver on the rare occasions he left the pool hall.
A black woman with short bleached white hair and eyes that were gray, naturally, Angelique owned her own limo company and served almost every important personage in the Bronx.
She was leaning against the back door in her white pants suit, watching me. Angelique has a handsome face and a sleek figure, a nasty scar on her right cheek and inelegant hands. Seeing her, you got the feeling she could take care of herself. I’ve heard that she married an accountant but still kept her own books.
“Mr. McGill,” she said as I approached.
“Ms. Arabesque.”
“Mr. Nye asked me to take you wherever you needed to go.”
I’d ridden the subway out there; probably would have taken it back. Angelique was a gesture on the part of Luke. He was saying that he was my friend and he could see by my situation that I needed help.