Brice let his window down. “This mean I get to drive now?”
* * * *
Nancy was gone before seven-thirty. Louis used the White Pages to look up the name she had given him, Sharon Dowell, but now he wasn’t sure how to spell it. There were two listings. He tried the second number first.
“Hello,” a man answered.
“May I please speak to Sharon?”
“Who’s calling?”
“Tom,” Louis said. “I work at the beauty parlor.”
“What beauty parlor?”
Louis didn’t know the name of the place.
“Yes, where Sharon gets her hair done,” he said. “Do you know when she’ll be back?”
“This some kind of joke? My mother’s in the hospital.”
“I must have the wrong number.”
The guy called him an asshole before hanging up.
Louis tried the second number. This time a woman answered.
“Mrs. Dowell?” Louis said. “Sharon?”
“Who’s this?”
“I’m calling for a friend of yours from the beauty parlor. Nancy Ackerman.”
“Ackerman?”
“You might know her as Albano. Nancy Albano.”
“I know a Nancy from the salon where I go, but I’m not sure I know her last name. What’s this about?”
“I’m her ex-husband. My name is Louis and I’m calling to ask a favor.”
“You the first or the second ex? If I have the right Nancy, I mean.”
“The first,” said Louis through a forced chuckle. “I’m Louis.”
“The one she always talks about, okay. You’re the stud with the ponytail.”
“Thanks, but I doubt I qualify as a stud. Actually, Nancy had mentioned something about your knowing the guy who directed the porn movie Deep Throat. Something about he used to be your hairdresser or something.”
“Jerry Damiano,” Sharon said. “Yeah, he was. He used a different name in the film credits. Gerry Gerard, I think it was. He’s even in the movie, plays a fag in one scene.”
“A fag?”
“He just talks like one. Trust me, he’s straight.”
“So, you know him pretty well?”
“Well enough. Why?”
“I was wondering if I could maybe meet him.”
“You want a part in one of his movies? You must be a hung stud, you want that.”
“No, not that. Just some information is all. And maybe a business proposition.”
“I haven’t seen him in a while, but I’m sure I can get in touch with somebody knows where he is. What’s it about?”
“A car.”
“A what?”
“Just something I want to propose to the man. Can you hook me up with him?”
“Yeah, sure. Why not?”
“That would be great.”
“There something in it for me, Louis? I don’t accept checks.”
“Hey, whatever you want.”
“A date for now, but you can’t tell your ex. I don’t need the aggravation.”
Louis winked at himself in the mirror. “Say when.”
“When.”
“Excuse me?”
“When,” Sharon said, “but we’ll have to meet someplace. I’m expecting someone.”
“Someone who?”
“Does it make a difference?”
“No, not really, except it’s pretty late already.”
“We have about three hours.”
“You sure?”
“I’m not gonna beg you, honey.”
“You might not even like me.”
“You’re the guy your ex describes, if she’s the right ex, I’m sure I will, although I have a few years on you.”
Louis made a face.
“Not to worry,” she said. “I’m not ancient. I’m no throwaway.”
Louis pulled the receiver away a second time before he asked where it was they should meet.
Chapter 16
Lieutenant Detective Sean Kelly was wearing his sweatpants, baseball cap and the Led Zeppelin T-shirt again today. He acknowledged the bartender with a nod on his way to the pay phone near the stairs in the back of Fast Eddie’s. He picked up the receiver and waited until the bartender motioned toward the stairway with his head. Kelly returned the nod before heading down the stairs to Eddie Vento’s office.
He found the wiseguy sitting behind his desk scribbling on a Racing Form.
Vento pointed to the chair facing his desk. “Sit,” he said, then waited until Kelly was in the chair and added, “How goes it, constable?”
“Slow and steady,” said Kelly through a yawn. He spotted a stack of pictures on the corner of Vento’s desk and picked one up. “Cute girl,” he said. “Who is she?”
“That’s the Ivory Snow girl,” Vento said. He set the Racing Form off to one side of the desk. “Those are stills from that other movie, Behind the Green Door.”
Kelly was taking his time flipping through the pictures. “It is? What’s she doing driving a car?”
“I asked the same thing until I saw the movie. Part of the story line, what there is of one before all the screwing.”
Kelly yawned again before setting the pictures down.
Vento pointed at them and said, “Personally, I think that one, the broad at least, is a lot better’n the thing we’re peddling. This Ivory Snow girl angle they’re pushing, it’s gonna sell. Marilyn Chambers is a lot better-lookin’ than Linda Lovelace. A lot better. So’s the movie, the way it’s shot and without that dopey comedy they did with the doctor in Deep Throat. This one, they even got a football player made a cameo. The guy played for Oakland, broke Namath’s jaw.” Vento looked over a promo sheet with the cast to Behind the Green Door. “Ben Davidson,” he said.
“That was Ike Lassiter broke Namath’s jaw, but Davidson always gets the credit,” Kelly said.
“Whatever. He’s in the movie, too.”
“Doing porn?”
“No, just a cameo, but the girl and the sex is a lot better in this thing. The flip side is the ape they got plowing her. Some gorilla they found inna jungle someplace.”
Kelly picked up the pictures again.
“I guess we had the better gimmick, though, what Lovelace could do with a pole down her throat,” Vento said. “That and all the attention it got.”
“I hope somebody shot this bone after they made the movie,” Kelly said. He was holding a still of the actor Johnny Keyes wearing an exotic necklace.
“The hell do I care?” Vento said. “The broads do these movies, they let anything inside them. Personally, I don’t mind if she’s banging a shine. Live and let live, I say, but some of these broads, the raunchy ones, they do things with animals, real animals, dogs and whatnot. What I heard about our star, what she did before Deep Throat. Imagine?”
“No worse than this,” Kelly said. He was still holding the still of Johnny Keyes.
Vento lit a cigar. “What’s the problem you had to see me?”
Kelly set the picture on the edge of Vento’s desk. “Couple things, actually. One is this guy on Long Island we visited today. Whatta you wanna do with him?”
“He give you anything?”
“Nada,” Kelly said. “He was stand-up, if that’s what you were worried about. Played dumb as a stump.”
“And?”
“I still need somebody,” Kelly said. “I gotta have something now we talked to the guy. Who can you give me?”
“Maybe a new guy I have. I don’t know yet. Let me think about it. Not one of the films, though, you can forget that. They’re too valuable.”
“What about this other one with the spear-chucker?”
Vento shook his head no. “Word is we made a move on the two guys out West made it, brothers or some shit they are. It’s too valuable to turn over now.”
“It’s not like we’d keep it. I process it into evidence and take it back a week or two later.”
“A week or two it could be earning.”<
br />
“You guys didn’t bleed enough out of this stuff yet?”
Vento pointed a thumb up at the ceiling. “The beast at the top is forever hungry, my friend. There’s never enough it comes to two things this life, pussy or money, and the beast, he’ll always take money before pussy.”
“And on that note,” said Kelly, opening his palm to Vento. “I believe I’m the one in need.”
Vento leaned over to open the bottom drawer of his desk. He pulled out a strongbox, unlocked and opened it, then grabbed a thin stack of paper-clipped twenty-dollar bills and tossed it on the desk.
“And the other thing you had to discuss?” he said.
“Your girlfriend,” Kelly said.
“Which girlfriend?”
“The one I walked into the other night.”
“The one lives here?”
“She has my hanky.”
“Excuse me?”
“I had to lend it to her to plug the blood was flowing out her nose like a hose,” Kelly said. “She’d just snorted herself into a near OD.”
“Stupid cunt.”
“I think you’re taking chances with that one.”
“What do you mean?”
“The way she shoots off at the mouth, for one thing. She mentioned something about me being a cop for another.”
“Excuse me?”
“Implied maybe’s a better word. Implied.”
“Maybe it’s your red fucking hair, the freckles. You should try getting some sun. Gat a tan, something.”
“And then there’s the junk,” Kelly said. “That’s a deadly combination in my book, ’specially push comes to shove.”
“Meaning?”
“Junkies, Eddie, you can’t trust them. Not ever.”
“Unless you know something I don’t, I’m not worried about her.”
“Maybe you should be.”
“You got something to say, spit it the fuck out.”
Kelly put a hand up. “I’m just being careful here.”
Vento gave it a moment, then said, “Duly noted. Now I have a question. Any more word on our friend the shakedown artist?”
“Hastings? Retired.”
“Good,” Vento said. He pointed to the cash on the desk. “Don’t spend it too fast,” he said. “Things are drying up on this movie. At least on the Island they are.”
“You’ll have to do something on this Massapequa thing,” Kelly said. “I need something before Saturday or my guys will start wondering things they shouldn’t.”
“I’ll call,” Vento said. “Hastings really retired?”
“Forced off is the word,” said Kelly, suddenly uncomfortable discussing it. He squirmed some in his chair. “Got smart and listened for a change. Stepped out before he lost his pension, but that was more our doing, that balancing act. Not that it makes him any less of a psycho.” He motioned toward the film stills. “I get a screening some day or what?”
Vento pointed to the cash Kelly was still holding. “You could probably get the actress to do a live show for what you’re holding there. I doubt she got much more’n that anyway.”
“The one screwed the ape? I’d rather jerk off.”
“Yeah, you probably would,” Vento said.
* * * *
“Would you look at what the cat dragged in?” said Sharon Dowell to the big man that had just walked in the bar. He was at least six foot, three hundred pounds. His shoulders were broad enough to block sight of the doorway behind him.
“Sharon?” he said.
She’d been sitting at the end of the bar waiting for the guy she’d spoken to on the phone earlier. “You better remember my name,” she said, then took a long drag on her Pall Mall.
The big man approached her and Sharon craned her neck to offer him her cheek. He kissed her before sitting on the empty stool to her right.
“I haven’t seen you in forever,” she said. “Where you been?”
“College,” the big man said.
“Geez, I didn’t know. When?”
“Couple, three years ago.”
“Where?”
The big man pointed at the ceiling with his left thumb. “Fishkill,” he said, then waved to get the bartender’s attention. “She’s with me,” he said. “Whatever she’s having and a Rob Roy.”
“Rob Roy?” Sharon said. “When’s the last time I heard somebody order one of those?”
“I can pace myself this way,” the big man said. He pulled a pack of Marlboros from his shirt pocket. “How’ve you been?”
“I can’t complain. I shouldn’t anyway. I had that settlement a few years back, that keeps me afloat.”
The big man set a twenty on the bar. “What settlement’s that?” he asked.
Sharon extended her right arm across the bar. “Got hit by a bus the summer of sixty-eight,” she said. “Shattered my elbow all to hell. See how I can’t straighten it? That’s as far as it goes. Lost a percentage of its use for life. That plus the fact the bus driver had a few. Didn’t even know he hit me, the drunk. Said he thought it was some kids threw something at the bus made the thump. A dozen witnesses forced them to settle.”
The big man had just lit his cigarette. “How much you get?” he asked while holding the smoke in his lungs.
“A good enough piece of change. Enough so’s I don’t have to sling dishes anymore, but it gets damp outside, especially it’s cold, the thing swells up to a balloon. Hurts like hell.”
“Sorry to hear it.”
Sharon pointed at him. “First time we met, you probably don’t remember, was the steakhouse in Canarsie.”
The bartender set both drinks on the bar. The big man pushed the twenty at him, then turned to Sharon and winked. “Rockaway Parkway, sure,” he said. “I remember. Brothers it was called. You was with Benny Luchessi back then, right?”
“Before he was married, yeah.”
“Well, good for you, you’re not waitressing anymore,” he said, then raised his drink in a toast. “Salute.”
Sharon picked up her Tom Collins. They touched glasses. “Cheers,” she said.
Both took sips of their drinks.
“So, what are you doing here tonight?” the big man asked. “You with somebody?”
“Waiting on somebody,” Sharon said. “Somebody half my age, I think. Imagine?”
“Hey, good for you.”
“Well, I’m not so sure about that. It doesn’t do what they say for the ego, being with somebody so young. Might impress the ones keeping score, but it never fools the players.”
The big man nudged her with his elbow. “So, what, I would’ve showed up a little earlier, I had a shot? It’s not nice to tease old fellas like myself.”
Sharon set a hand on his huge shoulder. “I thought guys your age could keep it up, Jimmy....”
They shared a chuckle.
“Well, he don’t show, this teenager you’re waiting on, I’ll give you a lift,” Jimmy said. “Maybe you invite me in.”
“You still driving those big cars you used to like?”
“What else I’m gonna do, my size? Elektra, the Ninety-eights, Bonnevilles. I stay away from the Caddys because of the attention, but I’m too big for anything smaller.”
Sharon sighed. “I used to love the back of Benny’s Fleetwood, I have to say. It was like being in your own apartment.”
Jimmy laughed again.
“Speaking of Fleetwoods,” Sharon said. “The kid I’m waiting on is interested in the one they used in that porno they’re making all the fuss about. Says he knows somebody knows somebody else wants to buy the thing.”
The big man squinted.
Sharon sipped her drink again. “Truth is, he’s only coming around tonight to pursue it, that car. I know the guy directed the movie.”
“No kidding?”
“An old fling from way back, but the kid, the one I’m waiting on... ”—she stopped to glance at her watch—“he’s already late, he’s pro’bly looking to score off the car somehow.”
>
“What’s his name, this kid?”
“Louis. I’m not sure his last name. Kisk maybe. Or Kirsk, something like that.”
“He by chance got a ponytail?”
“From what I hear,” she said. “I actually haven’t met him yet. Supposedly blonde. A real hunk, too, is what I was told.”
The big man laughed.
“What’s funny?”
“He meeting you here?”
Sharon glanced at her watch again. “Should’ve already.”
Jimmy got up off the stool, drew on his cigarette, then motioned her toward the back. “Let’s step out for some air,” he said.
“Air? It’s muggy out.”
“I got something I wanna run by you.”
* * * *
Nick made three passes on the street where John Albano lived before he felt it was safe enough to park. The Buick was still in the spot where it had been the night before and both rear tires were still flat. Too bad, he thought. He would’ve enjoyed slashing a new set of tires.
He checked the rearview mirror and saw the bruise on his head. The knot had started to recede a little, but the bruise was still turning colors. It would probably take a full week before it faded. He remembered how the guys in the bar had given him shit after he’d been knocked out. The humiliation had only just started after they splashed cold water on his face.
Now, except for an occasional car stopping for the traffic light on the corner, the street where John Albano lived was mostly quiet. Nick remembered there was a bus stop directly across the street from Albano’s building. He drove past the Buick one last time before parking at the opposite end of the block. He lit a cigarette and sat low behind the steering wheel until a bus finally passed.
Nick walked the length of the block to the passenger side of the Buick’s front tires and kneeled down as if to tie his shoes. He took a quick look both ways on the sidewalk, took the stiletto out and pressed the release to expose the blade. He jabbed the tire along the dirty whitewall and listened for the hissing sound as the air escaped. He jabbed the tire again on the opposite end, then did it a few more times before the front end of the Buick began to descend.
He walked to the front of the car and glanced at the driver-side tire. He peered over his shoulder and could see lights on in the apartment building where Albano lived. Last night he had double-parked alongside the car to do his work. Tonight he felt more exposed and decided to leave the one tire facing the street untouched.
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