Sick Like That

by Norman Green

  “How do you figure that?”

  “We all know how good you kick ass, Martillo. That ain’t all there is to the job, though. You know what you have to do now? You have to go ask the questions those clowns should be asking but ain’t. You hear what I’m saying? You find the right answers, you might find out who Frank Waters is, and what he did. Because those other guys find him, it’ll be by tripping over his dead body.”

  “Even with Bobby Fallon helping them?”

  He looked at her sourly. “Fallon ain’t helping nobody, he’s babysitting, that’s what he’s doing.”

  “All right,” she said. She stood up to go.

  “Martillo,” he said.

  “What.”

  “The other night, when you come down here. You didn’t come just so you could piss in my face. You wanted to see how much juice I got left.”

  “So?”

  He glared at her. “So I want what’s mine. Houston Investigations belongs to me. While I been in here, you been driving around town on my license, but once I get my shit together, we go back to the way it was. I got the right to what’s mine.”

  “Oh really?” she said. “You got the right to kiss my ass, Stiles, that’s what you got.”

  “Goddammit—”

  “You listen to me, you fat sack of shit, as of right now you got nothing. You get yourself out of this hole you’re in, okay, you prove that you can haul your own weight, you quit acting like a jackass, maybe me and Sarah will work with you. Maybe. Asshole.” She walked out.

  “Martillo!” She could hear him yelling after her. “You ain’t got the license! You can’t get one! You don’t qualify! You ain’t put in the time! I won’t help you! Goddam you, Martillo! MAR-TEE-YO!”

  It wasn’t that far from the hospital to Costello’s. Al double-parked on the hill and watched the lot. The original valet was still not back, they had a tall skinny kid parking the cars.

  Suppose it was you, she thought, suppose you were the new guy. Someone comes along, gives you a story about how they owe the other guy money or something. What would you do?

  Play stupid, of course. Sorry, lady, I don’t know the guy, I only got here day before yesterday. And then warn the first guy off, hey, dude, some people were here looking for you . . . Salve your conscience, assuming you’ve got one, hey, I did the right thing, sort of. And now I get to keep the gig.

  You know how these Italians are, gotta impress the lady, right, throw the kid a fifty, just like all the other tough guys do.

  They’re coming for you, bro. What was I supposed to do?

  Wait, she told herself. Give him some time. He’ll be back.

  Sixteen

  Salathiel Edwards parked his car in the DOCTORS ONLY section of the lot behind the Wyckoff Heights Hospital in Brooklyn and walked inside. He showed his badge at the security desk, where the guards nodded him through. He took an elevator to the cafeteria level, bought two coffees, carried them out into the courtyard garden where Alessandra Martillo waited for him.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  “My pleasure,” he said, sitting down. “Very nice, here. Quiet. Secluded, even. Samatter, you don’t wanna be seen out in public with me?”

  “I thought it might be the other way around.”

  “No, I got no problems there, it’s part of my job, you know, development of contacts and informants among Brooklyn’s street criminals, organized crime figures, and other sundry and assorted malefactors and undesirables such as yourself.”

  “What did I do now?” she said, trying to sound innocent.

  “Oh, you set it off, sister, you lit the fuse. And the shitstorm continues.”

  “I do what I can,” she said. “No, really, what happened?”

  Edwards put his booted feet up on an empty chair. “Well, it’s like this,” he said, in a passable imitation of Foghorn Leghorn. “An undercover operative from the DEA, together with an inspector from the FDNY, working with the full, I say the full, knowledge and cooperation of the NYPD, conducted a review of the facility being operated as a bonded warehouse of Palermo Imports, of Richmond Terrace, blah blah blah. Under license, I should add, of the United States Customs. At ten oh six yesterday morning the facility was found to be unoccupied. The gate in the fence was ripped off its hinges and the truck bay door had been rendered inoperative, allegedly by the expedient of driving a forklift truck through it, allege, I say allegedly, because said forklift truck was missing and presumed stolen. Contents of said warehouse being, I say, being approximately twelve thousand, four hundred, and twenty-eight bottles of wine, with an unknown number of bottles smashed all throughout the interior of said warehouse, leaving a carpet of broken glass and wine residue. Crime scene evidence contaminated and rendered useless due to the multiplicity of footprints, fingerprints, ass prints, tire tracks, pee tracks, turd piles, and vomit puddles, all assumed to have been left behind by the local teen-aged and wino populace after security was breached.”

  “Oh shit,” Al said.

  “No shit,” Edwards said. “We ain’t even got to the good parts yet. In the course of their inspection, the aforementioned agents of the DEA and the FDNY were interrupted and interfered with in the dispatch of their appointed duties by the arrival, at approximately ten forty-eight, by the arrival, I say the arrival, of individuals see attached addenda who orally and by voice identified themselves as federal agents and who was riding in vans, a helicopter, and an urban assault vehicle.”

  “What? Urban assault—”

  “Vehicle,” Edwards said, nodding. “Winnebago with a hard-on. Said agents refused to produce identification. The FDNY inspector notified his superiors as well as the captain of the local precinct, who having been previously banished to the wastelands of Staten Island due to his combative, obstreperous, and dare I mention alcoholic nature. Said captain arrived at the crime scene at approximately eleven twenty-three accompanied by every available on-duty officer of the law.” Edwards laughed softly. “You know something? I’m sorry I missed it. Sound like the charge of the dumb-ass brigade.”

  “Wow.” Al shook her head. “Any footage from the security cameras?”

  “Al, come on. You get the picture, if it wasn’t stolen, it was smashed, if it wasn’t smashed, it was drunk up. No cameras, no tapes, no PCs in the office, shit, even the office chairs was gone. We’re talking the aftermath of the biggest, baddest, most-fucked-up frat party in the history of mankind. They ain’t gonna find anything usable in there, particularly as how they ain’t got around to looking yet.”

  “How about interviews with the local—”

  Edwards was laughing.

  “No interviews?”

  “Will you get serious? As we speak, the NYPD, FDNY, U.S. Customs Department, the DEA, and the Office of Homeland Security are all embroiled in a full-on, knock-down, bitch-slapping, dick-measuring party. By the time the cockfight is over anything and anybody useful will be long gone. Besides, from what they tell me, the place looked like a herd of wildebeests stampeded through there.”

  “You gonna get any heat behind this?”

  “I don’t see how,” he said. “I got a tip from one Giuseppe Rigatoni of Forty-seventh Avenue, Brooklyn, New York, and I passed it along. I might get my toes stepped on for not going through official channels, but I doubt that. I’m golden.”

  “Thank God for that,” Al told him. “I’d hate to get you into hot water.”

  “Baby, I got twenty-one years in,” he said. “I got good numbers, I got two commendations, one thanks to you, and I got a good record. My ex-wife is remarried and my youngest daughter graduates from Fordham this fall. You hear what I’m saying? No more alimony, not a hell of a lot of child support left, and I have put in my motherfucking time. I’m a free man, sister. Anybody gives me shit, I walk.”

  “So how come you’re not out on a fishing boat somewhere?”

  “I got a place down in South Carolina,” he said, nodding. “I go down two, three weeks every summer, drink beer and play g
olf. Scare the bejesus out of the white folk. ‘Cornelius,’ ” he said, in a quavering old woman’s voice, “‘there’s a Negro on our golf course.’ ” And then, in Foghorn’s voice again, “‘Don’t look, I say don’t look at him, dearest, it’s O.J. Simpson.’ But it’s quiet there, beautiful, peaceful. Boring as hell. One week and I’m ready to come home to Brooklyn, where I like what I do, and I know what I’m good at.” He peered at her. “It ain’t a bad life, in spite of all the shit you hear about it. You can make a good living on The Job. I know I talked to you about this before—”

  “Yes, you did. Did I hear you say ‘Homeland Security’? Is that who those guys are?”

  “You did hear that, but that is not who those guys are. Matter of fact they work for something called The Harkonnen Group, which is a contractor in the employ of the aforementioned Office of Homeland Security, which makes them, under some obscure law passed back in ’02, de facto agents of the government, although they do not have subpoena power nor can they arrest anyone. Not even you. So that makes them legit, except, maybe, in Staten Island. That is not how interdepartmental cooperation is supposed to work, but in these times of economic insecurity, I say, I say they have a budget that is as deep and wide as the Atlantic Ocean, which insures them undying friendship and free donuts wherever they go.”

  “That’s how come they get Bobby Fallon chauffeuring them around,” Al said.

  “Can’t say I ever made the acquaintance of Mr. Fallon.”

  “Stupid question, I know, but were there any large shipping containers at Palermo Imports?”

  “Nope. Wine bottles. Broken glass.”

  “Whatever it was in those containers,” Al said, “they must’ve moved it before they cleared out.”

  “How do you know it wasn’t just more wine?”

  She shook her head. “No way. Torrente, the guy ran the place, was sweating those containers way too much.”

  Edwards shrugged. “Well, as soon as everyone’s done throwing their rattles at one another, someone will get back up in there with drug dogs, and if there was anything good in the containers, at least we’ll know what it was. And don’t be surprised if someone, sooner or later, wants to sit down with you and have a long conversation about Torrente, Palermo Imports, and whatever else you know about that warehouse.”

  “Bet you’re wrong. Marty Stiles says the Harkonnen guys are not cops. They just want to find Frank Waters and his buddies and put them in a box. He says Harkonnen acts like they already have everything they need. Says they’re not investigating anything.”

  His face clouded over. “Ain’t that some shit,” he said. “Gonna be their case, you watch, and they’re gonna drop the ball.”

  “I wonder who really owns the warehouse,” Al said.

  “Probably some shell corporation out of the Dominican Republic or someplace,” he said. “These guys covered their tracks too well to leave something like that to trip them up. Someone will go check, I’m sure, but it’ll be a waste of time.”

  They might if they were cops, she thought. “You’re probably right,” she told him. “Thanks for the coffee.”

  Sarah Waters settled in behind her computer in the outer office of Houston Investigations and started in. She had gotten so used to the task that she could generate invoices while her mind was on autopilot. The invoices were all in the same format and generally said the same things, so for the most part all she needed to do was to change the names, dates, and some of the details on her invoice template, save it, and move on to the next one. That left her mind free to dig around in her mental trash cans, and on this particular day that did not seem to be an asset.

  The door to the inner office was just behind her, and it was open. Ever since Marty had left she had thought of it as Al’s, through seniority if nothing else, but Al never spent any time in there. The issues that Sarah had organized and laid out for Al still lay unmolested in their various file folders on the desk, no closer to resolution than they had been when she had first generated the paperwork. Alessandra, Sarah thought, might be great at her job, she was smart, tough, and seemingly without fear, not to mention being younger, taller, and with a nicer ass and better hair than Sarah, but she was not the model executive.

  You’re doing it again, she told herself, you’re comparing her exterior to your interior. Means nothing. And your hair is not so bad . . . Alessandra has her insecurities, you can bet on that, it’s just that she simply excels at keeping them hidden. The point being, Sarah told herself, that you can’t keep leaving everything for Al to make the decisions on because if she doesn’t want to deal with it, she procrastinates, and nothing gets resolved. Their liability insurance was one example, Agatha West’s case was another. You’ve asked Martillo about both of them at least three times now, Sarah thought, to no avail. Why not just be a big girl and deal? Easier to get forgiveness than permission anyhow. She got up, went into the inner office, retrieved two manila folders and brought them out to her desk.

  She had gotten four quotes on the insurance policy. Two of them were outlandishly expensive, the third merely exorbitant. The fourth one seemed almost reasonable, but she was not quite sure the agent who’d quoted her had really understood what she’d wanted. Insurance is worthless if it doesn’t cover what you need it to . . . She looked over the paperwork again, both her letters to the agent and his replies. She couldn’t find any obvious holes, but you really needed to be a lawyer or have OCD to figure out the gobbledygook . . . Forget it, she told herself. We need a certificate to send to Hyatt before we can start doing their work, and we really need to start doing their work. Besides, nothing is going to go wrong.

  Hopefully. What could happen?

  She called the agent who’d quoted the cheapest price and told him she was sending him a binder, then she generated the check, sealed it in the proper envelope, and put in into the outgoing mail.

  There, she thought. One down.

  She really didn’t need to look at the West file . . .

  Jake West lived in the apartment upstairs from his studio. The place had been decorated in a style that might have been lifted straight out of the pages of Men Without Women Monthly. The walls were white, the floors were black. Black leather couch, white bookshelves, black and white area rugs done in an abstract geometric pattern. Ginormous wide-screen television. Aseptic kitchen done in black, white, and stainless steel, looked like it had never been used. Sterile, she thought, nothing in the place to give you any real clue as to the nature of the man . . .

  Her knees were unsteady, her palms damp, and her pulse thumped so loud in her temples that she was sure he could hear it. All the usual “what if” questions raged through her mind, one after the other. Her fear and self-consciousness stopped just short of paralysis, though, she did not trust herself to speak, but she could still walk. She didn’t know what to say anyhow, all of the real negotiations between Jake and herself had, thus far, been nonverbal, consisting of fleeting eye contact, a gentle touch here and there, electricity in the space between them, generated, she hoped, mutually. She walked next to him as he showed her his place. “It’s on the small side, but I like it,” he told her, seemingly oblivious to her torment. Maybe he’s not feeling this the way I am, she thought, maybe he’s still thinking about his stepmother . . . But then he turned, looked at her, and she knew. Your eyes tell on you, Jake . . . “Lots of light,” he went on after a moment. “And a great view from the back porch. Can’t see it now, of course, it’s too dark, plus, it’s a real disaster out there. It’s been converted into a sunroom and I use it as my work space, so, you know, it’s a complete mess.”

  “Show me,” she said, hoarse.

  “Really? It’s just clay, you know, paints and easels and sketches taped up, it’s not . . .” He met her eyes again. “Right this way,” he said. He walked her over to a door, opened it, hit a light switch on his way into the room. He walked over and stood by a wooden table that had a smooth steel top. A rough clay bust of a man’s head and shoulder
s stood on the table. The features were not yet well defined, but from her spot in the doorway Sarah thought she could feel something coming from the sculpture, a sense of strength, lessons learned, time gone past. For sure she could smell the faint damp earthy scent of the clay, the tang of the oil paints, even the dusty cotton smell of the canvas. “This room is what sold me on the place,” he told her. “I love this room.”

  “Yeah,” she said, swallowing with difficulty, trying to re-imagine what she had been thinking when she’d made her decision. You already made up your mind once, she told herself. You even told Martillo what you were going to do . . . Desire was a half-wild mare that she’d kept shut up too long in the barn. She looked at Jake, who stood with his back to her, one hand just touching the clay bust, his fingertips barely caressing the hair as though it were his child’s . . . For once she allowed herself to feel what she wanted instead of merely thinking about it. Thus unchained, her desire leaped past her fears and overpowered her reason. You’re here once, she thought, don’t let your doubts ruin everything . . . With a shaking hand she reached for the light switch.

  She needn’t have been afraid.

  They retired to the bedroom in between the first rush of madness and the second, although the second time it was not like true insanity, it was slower and more deliberate, which was better in a way because you didn’t fall off the cliff before you got where you needed to go, and in another way it was worse because she couldn’t blame it on the moment . . .

  Black sheets, she thought, after. Guys are so funny. She sat up in the bed, reveled in the sensation of cool air on her skin. Jake pretended not to stare. “Tell me about your brother,” she said.

  “Izzy?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “Was he like you? Did you guys hang out? I never had a brother or a sister, I always wondered what it would be like.”

  Jake nodded, stared off into space for a moment. “Well, we were much different,” he said. “I was never any good in school because I couldn’t pay attention, and in any sort of math class I would just lose consciousness. But I always knew what my thing was gonna be. Izzy, he was the opposite, he aced every class he ever took, especially the ones that had to do with numbers. I guess he got that from the old man. And you know, he was a couple years older than me so he was always bossing me around when we were kids, and I resented that, so we would fight. And then, when Clytemnestra came along she got between us. We didn’t, you know . . . When you’re trying to . . .” He turned and looked at her.