by Nocturne
“There’s cameras and guard dogs,” Luis said. “I don’t know how they got in so quick and easy.”
Even so, by the time the raiders broke into the actual ring area upstairs, some of the false walls had already been moved back and the event’s organizers were fleeing over rooftops and through tunnels, one leading out to Harris Avenue, another running underground to a beauty parlor adjacent to the parking garage. The police caught only one of the promoters, a man named Aníbal Fuentes, who was charged with two felony counts.
“This shouldn’t be allowed to happen,” Luis said, shaking his head. “Kings and emperors used to have cockfights, did you know that? Even American presidents! Thomas Jefferson! George Washington! The father of the nation, am I right? He liked to watch cockfights. This is a sin, what they’re doing. Persecuting people who enjoy an honest-to-God sport!”
In his report to the Police Commissioner, Captain Forsythe noted that on the street behind the theater his men had found twenty-five bloodied roosters, all fitted with metal talons, twenty of them dead, the rest still alive and twitching in agony. In rooms behind the false walls, officers from the Four-Eight found another forty birds in cages, pillowcases over their heads to keep them calm in the dark before they were tossed into the ring.
“They came from all over,” Luis said. “Florida and Pennsylvania, Connecticut and Washington, D.C. Some trainers brought their birds all the way from San Juan and Ponce! This was a big event, man! There were birds coming to the ring from all over! Like toreadors arriving!”
“You didn’t happen to notice a black limo, did you?” Carella asked.
What the hell, he thought, toreadors arriving!
“Oh sure,” Luis said.
“What kind of limo?” Carella asked at once.
“A Caddy.”
“Where’d you see it?”
“Back of the theater. When I was walking over from the garage. The door we came in before. Where the trainers take the birds in, you know? The stage door, I guess they call it. The one that’s busted now.”
“You saw a trainer taking a chicken out of a black Caddy limousine, is that right?”
“Not a chicken. A rooster. A fighting cock!”
“Trainer drove him up in a Caddy, is that right?”
“That’s right. Took him out of the backseat.”
“In a cage, or what?”
“No cage. Just a pillowcase over his head. Just his legs showing.”
“You wouldn’t know this trainer, would you?”
“Not personally.”
“Then how?”
“I looked up his name.”
“I’m sorry, you did what?”
“On the card.”
“The card.”
“Yeah, the owners’ names are on the card. I recognized him when he was carrying the bird in the ring. Remembered him driving up in the Caddy. Figured he was a big shot, you know? I mean, a fuckin movie star bird in a limo, am I right? So I looked up his name on the card.”
“And what was his name?” Carella asked, and held his breath.
“Jose Santiago,” Luis said.
11
Priscilla and the boys could not find the club.
Their taxi drove up and down Harris Avenue forever, passing the darkened marquee of the Alhambra theater more times than they cared to count. On their last swing past it, two men in heavy overcoats, both of them bareheaded, one of them a redhead, were climbing into an automobile. Priscilla thought they looked familiar, but as she craned her neck for a better look through the fogged rear window, the car doors slammed shut behind them. A third man, smaller, slighter, and wearing a short green barn coat that looked as if it had come from L. L. Bean or Lands’ End, stood on the sidewalk, watching the car as it pulled away.
“Back up,” Priscilla told the cabdriver.
“I’m not gonna spend all night here looking for this club,” the cabbie said.
“Just back up, would you please?” she said. “Before he disappears, too.”
The cabbie threw the car into reverse and started backing slowly toward where Luis Villada, his hands in his coat pockets, was walking away from the Alhambra. At this hour of the morning, in this neighborhood, Luis would have run like hell if this was anything but a taxi. Even so, he was wary until he saw the blond woman sitting on the backseat, lowering the window on the curbside.
“Excuse me,” she called.
He stood where he was on the curb, not moving any closer to the taxi because now he saw that the blonde was with two men, both of them wearing hats. He didn’t trust men who wore hats.
“Yeah?” he said.
“Are you familiar with a club called The Juice Bar?”
“Yeah?” he said.
“Do you know where it is?”
“Yeah?”
“Could you help us find it, please?”
“There’s no sign,” he said.
“We can’t even find the address,” she said.
“Half the addresses up here, the numbers are gone.”
“It’s supposed to be 1712 Harris.”
“Yeah, that’s up the block,” he said, taking his right hand from his pocket and pointing. “Between the dry cleaners and the carnicería. They probably don’t have numbers, either.”
“Thank you very much.”
“It’s a blue door,” Luis said. “You have to ring.”
“Thank you.”
“De nada,” he said, and put his hand back in his pocket, and began walking home.
He was mugged on the next corner.
His hatless assailant stole his watch, his wallet, and the envelope containing the three hundred dollars the detectives had paid him for his time and his information.
In this city, you could legally serve alcoholic beverages till four in the morning, but the underground clubs operated till a bit before sunrise, when all the vampires had to be back in their coffins. The Juice Bar offered booze, beer, wine and the occasional fruit drink right up to the legal closing limit, and then—to the accompaniment of a three-piece jazz band—began serving anything that turned you on. At six, the club offered breakfast while a lone piano player filled the air with dawnlike medleys.
It was close to three o’clock when Priscilla rang the bell button set in the jamb to the right of the blue door.
“The fuck is this?” Georgie wanted to know. “Joe sent us?”
They waited.
A flap in the door opened.
Fuckin speakeasy here, Georgie thought.
Priscilla held up her card.
“I’m here to listen to the band,” she said.
“Okay,” the man behind the flap said at once, and opened the door. Fact of it was he hadn’t even glanced at her card. Until four a.m. the club would be operating legally and he’d have admitted even a trio of Barbary pirates carrying swords and wearing black eye patches.
The club was constructed like a crescent moon, with the bandstand at the apogee of its arc, farthest from the entrance door. The entrance and the cloakroom were side by side on the curving flank of the arc’s left horn. The bar was on the right horn, a dozen stools ranked in front of it. Priscilla and the boys left their coats with a hatcheck girl who flashed a welcoming smile as she handed Georgie the three claim checks. She was wearing a black mini and a white scoop-necked blouse, and Georgie looked her up and down as if auditioning her for a part in a movie. The equivalent of a maître d’—that is to say, he was wearing a jacket—offered to seat them at a table, but Priscilla said she preferred sitting at the bar, closer to the band. In any club, it was always the bartender who noticed who came in when and did what where. It was always the bartender who had information.
The band was playing “Midnight Sun.”
The tune almost brought tears to Priscilla’s eyes, possibly because she realized she could never hope to play it as well as the piano player here in this Riverhead dive, possibly because her grandmother’s pathetic note had expressed a hope abandoned long ago. Prisci
lla knew she would never become a concert pianist. The thought that Svetlana had still considered this a viable ambition was heartbreaking, more so when one considered the meager sum of money she’d left for the achievement of such an impossible goal. Or had there been more in the envelope? Which, after all, was why she was here looking for the tall blond man who’d delivered it. But even so, even if there’d been a million dollars in that shabby yellow packet, Priscilla knew she didn’t have, would never have the stuff. How could she even begin to approach a beast like the presto agitato movement of the Moonlight Sonata when she hadn’t yet truly mastered the chart to “Midnight Sun”? She dabbed at her eyes and ordered a Grand Marnier on the rocks. The boys ordered Scotch again.
The bartender looked like an actor.
Every would-be actor in this city was either a bartender or a waiter.
Long black hair pulled into a ponytail. Soulful brown eyes. Delicate, long-fingered hands. Great profile.
His name was Marvin.
Change it, Priscilla thought.
“I’ll tell you why we’re here, Marvin,” she said.
Marvin. Jesus.
He was looking at her card, impressed. He figured the two goons were bodyguards. Lady played piano at the Powell, she needed bodyguards. He hoped that one day, when he was a matinee idol, or a movie star, or both, he would have bodyguards of his own. Meanwhile he was honored that she was here in their midst. Shitty little dump like this, hey.
“The man we’re looking for, Marvin …”
Jesus.
“… is someone who would’ve been here yesterday morning around eleven-thirty, maybe a bit later.”
She was figuring half an hour or so to get uptown by cab, on a Sunday morning, when the traffic would’ve been light. The blond man had left the hotel at a little past eleven. Placing him on Harris Avenue at eleven-thirty was reasonable.
“Yeah, it’s possible,” Marvin said. “We start serving breakfast at six.”
“Are you still serving at eleven-thirty?”
“On Sundays, yeah. We get a big brunch crowd, serve till two-thirty, three o’clock, then open again at nine. We’re open all weekend, closed on Mondays and Tuesdays, dead nights here in the city.”
“Were you working this past Saturday night?”
“I come on at four every night. That’s when we go underground and the shift changes. Well, not Tuesdays or Wednesdays.”
“Did you come on at four this past Saturday night?”
“Yeah. Well, Sunday morning it was, actually.”
“Four a.m., right?”
“Yeah.”
“Were you here at eleven-thirty, twelve o’clock?”
“Yeah, I work through till we close. Sunday’s a long day. I put in almost twelve hours. Rest of the week, we close at nine in the morning. It’s like a courtesy breakfast we serve. For the all-night crowd.”
Georgie was wondering how come, if Marvin came on at four every morning but Tuesday and Wednesday, how come he was here, now, at three, three-fifteen, whatever the hell it was on a Monday morning? He looked at his watch. Twenty after. So how come, Marvin?
Marvin was a mind reader.
“Jerry called me to come in early,” he explained.
Who’s Jerry? Georgie wondered.
“Cause Frank started throwing up.”
Who’s Frank? Georgie wondered.
“Must’ve been one of those flu bugs,” Marvin explained.
“So today you came in early, is that what you’re saying?” Tony asked.
“Yeah, I got here about an hour ago.”
“How about yesterday?” Priscilla asked.
“I got here the usual time.”
“Four a.m.”
“Right.”
“The man we’re looking for would’ve been blond,” Priscilla said.
“You’re a cop, right?” Marvin said.
“No, I’m an entertainer. You saw my card.”
“How about your two friends here? Are they cops?”
“Do they look like cops?” Priscilla asked.
They didn’t look like cops to Marvin.
“Tall blond man wearing a blue coat and a red scarf,” Priscilla said.
Marvin was already shaking his head.
“See anyone like that?” Georgie asked.
He was pleased that Marvin was shaking his head. What he wanted to do now was get out of here fast, before Marvin the mind reader changed his mind.
“I don’t remember anyone who looked like that,” Marvin said.
Good, Tony thought. Let’s get the hell out of here.
“But why don’t you ask Anna?” Marvin said. “She’s the one would’ve taken his coat.”
They finally found Jose Santiago at 3:25 a.m. that Monday. They figured that a man who kept pigeons, and also drove a fighting rooster around in the backseat of a borrowed limo, had to be a bird fancier of sorts. So they checked out the roof of his building again, and sure enough, there he was, sitting with his back against the side wall of his pigeon coop. Last time they were here, dawn was fast approaching on a cold Sunday morning. Now, on an even colder Monday morning, sunrise was still approximately four hours away, and they were no closer to learning who had killed Svetlana Dyalovich on Saturday night. Nor did it appear that Santiago was going to offer any assistance in that direction. Santiago was weeping. He was also very, very drunk.
“Jose Santiago?” Hawes asked.
“That is me,” Santiago said.
“Detective Cotton Hawes, Eighty-seventh Squad.”
“Mi gusto,” Santiago said.
“My partner, Detective Carella.”
“Igualmente,” Santiago said, and tilted a bottle of Don Quixote rum to his lips and took a long swallow. It was perhaps two degrees below zero out here, but he was wearing only blue jeans, a white shirt, and a pink V-necked cotton sweater. He was a slender man in his early thirties, Carella guessed, with curly black hair, a pale complexion, and delicate features. His dark brown eyes seemed out of focus, moist at the moment because he was still weeping. Immediately after the detectives introduced themselves, he seemed to forget their presence. As if alone here on the roof, he began shaking his head over and over again, weeping more bitterly, clutching the rum to his narrow chest, his knuckles white around the neck of the bottle. In the bitter cold, his breath plumed onto the night.
“What’s the matter, Jose?” Hawes asked gently.
“I killed him,” Santiago said.
Here in the dead of night, the pigeons still and silent behind Santiago, both detectives felt their backs stiffen. But the man who’d just confessed to murder seemed completely harmless, sitting there sobbing, clutching the bottle to his chest, hot tears rolling down his face and freezing at once.
“Who’d you kill?” Hawes asked.
Voice still gentle. The night black around them. Carella standing beside him, looking down at the sobbing man in the pink cotton sweater, ridiculous for this time of year, sitting with his knees bent, his back to the dark silent pigeon coop.
“Tell us who you killed, Jose.”
“Diablo.”
“Who’s Diablo?”
“Mi hermano de sangue.”
My blood brother.
“Is that his street name? Diablo?”
Santiago shook his head.
“It’s his real name?”
Santiago nodded.
“Diablo what?”
Santiago tilted the bottle again, swallowed more rum, began coughing and sobbing and choking. The detectives waited.
“What’s his last name, Jose?”
Hawes again. Carella stayed out of it. Just stood there with his right hand resting inside the overlapping flap of his coat, where three buttons were unbuttoned at the waist. He may have looked a bit like Napoleon with his hand inside his coat that way, but his holster and the butt of a .38 Detective Special were only inches away from his fingertips. Santiago said nothing. Hawes tried another tack.
“When did you kill
this person, Jose?”
Still no answer.
“Jose? Can you tell us when this happened?”
Santiago nodded.
“Then when?”
“Friday night.”
“This past Friday night?”
Santiago nodded again.
“Where? Can you tell us where, Jose? Can you tell us what happened?”
And now, in the piercing cold of the night, Santiago began a rambling recitation in English and in Spanish, telling them it was all his fault, it wouldn’t have happened if he hadn’t allowed it, he had killed Diablo as certainly as if he’d slit his throat with a knife. Swilling rum, spitting, slobbering down the front of the absurd cotton sweater, his hands shaking, telling them he’d always taken care of him like a brother, they were partners, he’d never done anything to harm him, never. But on Friday night he’d killed him as sure as if he’d, oh dear God, he’d killed him, oh sweet Mary, he’d allowed the thing he loved most in the entire world to be slashed and torn …
Carella was beginning to get it.
… to shreds, he should have stopped it the moment he realized …
So was Hawes.
… how it would end, the moment he saw that the other bird was stronger, he should have stopped the fight, climbed into the ring, snatched his prizefighting rooster away from the ripping steel talons of the bigger, stronger bird. But no, instead he’d watched in horror, covering his face at last, screaming aloud like a woman when poor Diablo was slain.
“I killed him,” he said again.
And now he confessed that he’d suspected from the start that the other bird was on steroids, the sheer size of him, a vulture against a chick, poor brave Diablo strutting into the ring like the proud champion he was, battling in vain against overwhelming odds, giving his life …
“I was greedy,” Santiago said, “I had ten thousand dollars bet on him, I thought he could still win, the blood, so much blood, all over his feathers, madre de Dios! I should have tried to stop the slaughter. There are owners who jump into the ring during a fight, without the permission of the fence judge, there are strict rules, you know, but they break the rules, they save their beloved birds. I was greedy and I was afraid of breaking the rules, and so I let him die. I could have saved his life, I should have saved his life, forgive me, Mary, mother of God, I took an innocent life.”