“You sound just like Dad, Ma. Politics. Politics. Nothing gets done without politics. That’s what he used to say over and over.”
“And your father was right as rain, Sam.”
“He was right as far as he went,” Sam said. “But he ignored Clausewitz’s dictum, that where politics ends, warfare begins. And I don’t care if it takes going to war, I’m going to find out who killed Dave Spicer, and they’re going to pay the penalty.”
“Why don’t you boys get yourselves some sleep,” said Mrs. Butterfield, laying an affectionate hand on Sam’s shoulder. “It sounds to me like you’re going to need it.”
The next afternoon, Sam and Johnny Gee drove north toward Springfield, the Illinois capital located almost squarely in the middle of the state. Although they could have taken an interstate at least part of the way, they avoided the fastest route and stuck to state and county roads, which in central Illinois farm country followed section lines, running due north/south or east/west.
It was time to see Sheila.
She was an outsider who knew all the players inside. She had the additional value of being the only contact they had. Whether she would help them separate the good guys from the bad guys … that remained to be seen.
Sam, for one, was not accustomed to the concept of hooker as reliable source. Having watched her performance on the surveillance tape, he was far from convinced of the goodness of her motives in cooperating with those doing the videotaping of Lou Bosco and two hookers romping around the kingsize bed.
“What can I tell ya’, man?” said Johnny Gee, a pint of Black Velvet whiskey in one hand, a Picayune cigarette in the other, strung out on fear, mouth twitching, hands shaking, knees pumping up and down.
Sam crouched behind the wheel of the 944 and drove. In an hour, they’d be in Springfield. They had to do something. They needed somebody in reserve. His mind kept going back to what he’d learned in the army. Never reveal your total strength to the enemy. Never approach an objective with all of your forces. Always … but always … keep forces in reserve.
“We’re not going to diddlybop in there without somebody outside as backup,” Sam said. He glanced at the speedometer. They were doing seventy-five, a comfortable cruise. You could barely hear the Porsche’s little four-banger purring away up there under the hood. There was no wind noise. A country station burbled at low volume on the radio.
They could see the lights of Springfield illuminating the sky on the horizon. Johnny Gee had finished the pint of Black Velvet and was deep into his second pack of Picayunes. His hands had stopped shaking, and a wide smile had returned to his thin features.
“Okay, man, I got an idea,” said Johnny Gee. “Which way we comin’ into town?”
“On 29.”
“Good. You get near the center of town, look for MacIntyre Street and hang a left. I’ll show you the way from there.”
“What have you got in mind?”
“You want backup? I’ll get you backup. I know what you mean, man. These guys are playin’ for keeps.”
“Reach under your seat and hand me that bag,” Sam instructed.
Johnny Gee felt along the edge of his low-slung seat and pulled out a neatly folded grocery bag.
“Weighs a fuckin’ ton, man. What’s in there?”
“Give it to me.”
Johnny Gee handed him the bag. Sam put it in his lap and unfolded it with one hand. He reached inside.
“What the fuck is that?” Johnny Gee recoiled against the car door.
“It’s my army issue .45,” Sam said, holding the massive gray steel pistol in his right hand. He handed the bag to Johnny Gee. “Stick this back under your seat.”
Johnny Gee peered into the bag.
“What’s the rest of this stuff?”
“Five more full magazines. I’ve got one loaded already.”
“You aren’t plannin’ on usin’ that thing, are you, man?”
“Only if I have to.”
“Man, I got me a bellyful of Mexican courage, but I don’t know about this gun shit,” said Johnny Gee. “You didn’t say nothin’ about takin’ a gun before we left, man.”
“I didn’t have to. The .45 is always under the passenger seat, except when I’m home. Then I take it inside.”
“That’s … that’s … that’s not what I mean, Major,” stuttered Johnny Gee, searching for the right words. “I mean, you didn’t say nothin’ about shootin’ anybody.”
“I don’t plan to.”
“Then why you got the gun?”
“The .45 is for the possibility that someone might try to shoot me, or you, for that matter.”
“Defensive, like.”
“Defensive.”
“Oh.”
They hit Springfield, and near the center of town took a left on MacIntyre, drove a couple of blocks, took a right, and stopped. A small awning over the door next to the car had plastic letters spelling BILLIARDS sewn into the edge of the canvas. Both letters and awning had seen better days.
“This is the place?” asked Sam.
“The very one,” said Johnny Gee.
“Do you want me to come in with you?”
“Your presence … aahh … might make the patrons kinda nervous, if you get what I mean,” said Johnny Gee.
“I’ll stay with the car.”
“This won’t take long.”
Johnny Gee sauntered under the awning and through the door into smoky dimness, relaxed amidst the greenish glow of the pool tables and the soft click of the balls so familiar to him. A big black man behind an old brass cash register stood as he entered. Johnny Gee shot his cuffs and glanced down at his shoes. They’d seen better days.
“How you doin’, Tiny?” asked Johnny Gee, leaning against the cash register.
“My name ain’t Tiny, honky,” said the big black man, folding his arms across his chest, which was wider than the scrolled and engraved brass cash register.
“Yeah, well, my name ain’t honky,” said Johnny Gee. He watched as the big black man moved to his left, coming out from behind the register.
“You ought to know you ain’t got no business in here,” said the big black man. “This is a colored pool hall. This place ain’t your place.” He stood next to the door with his hand on the doorknob.
“You better be findin’ your way outa this part of town,” said the big black man.
“I was just lookin’ for Moon,” said Johnny Gee. “He still play here?”
The big black man took his hand off the doorknob and folded his arms again. He stood a foot taller than Johnny Gee. He was wearing baby blue jogging pants and a baby blue T-shirt, and he smelled of lavender aftershave.
“Who wants to know?” he asked. His voice was surprisingly squeaky for a man of his size.
“Johnny Gee. Me and him were, ah, roommates for a while, you might say.”
“You the dude from down south Moon always be talkin’ about? The skinny dude with the mean stick?”
Johnny Gee stepped back and pirouetted once.
“The one and only,” he said.
“Gimme just a minute.”
The big black man stepped behind the cash register and picked up a phone and whispered. Then he pointed to the back of the pool hall.
“Moon be through that door. He say come on back, he be glad to see you.” The big man smiled widely at Johnny Gee. He had all of his teeth, and they were very white, except for the ones in front, on which had been engraved the letters “T-I-N-Y” in gold. Johnny Gee walked through the nearly empty pool hall. Only a couple of games were in progress, being played by older gentlemen wearing fedoras and snap brims and suits with wide lapels and baggy pants. The place looked like a page out of a dusty, yellowed copy of a men’s magazine from the fifties.
He reached the back door, knocked once. The door opened. A short black man with gray hair came out and motioned that Johnny Gee should put his hands over his head, which he did. The short black man patted him down for weapons, reached insid
e his jacket, and took his wallet. He checked the wallet and handed it back to Johnny Gee.
“Razor blades,” the short black man said to Johnny Gee, nodding at the wallet. “Dudes takin’ to carryin’ razor blades right in a damn wallet.” He shrugged and nodded toward the door. Johnny Gee walked through.
“My man! Skinny Minny Johnny!” The voice came from somewhere in the dimness at the end of the back room. Johnny Gee squinted, but he couldn’t see anything. He waited at the door for his eyes to adjust to the dark.
“Moon? That you?” he asked.
“You right about that,” said the voice. “C’mon over here and sit down wit da Moon. Long time no see, my man.”
Johnny Gee walked in the direction of the voice. He saw nothing but darkness for his first ten steps. Then, at the end of the room, he saw the man the voice belonged to. He was seated on a velvet sofa with two young black women, one on either side of him. He was wearing a red silk suit, a black shirt, and a white tie. A gold medallion hung over the tie. On his feet were a pair of cream-colored kidskin loafers with black wingtip toes.
“You are lookin’ good, Moon. How do you feel?” asked Johnny Gee as he approached.
“Never better, my man. Where you been keepin’ yo’se’f? Ain’t seen you in a couple years, must be.”
Moon stood and took Johnny Gee’s hand and led him to a leather armchair. The room appeared to be empty except for a round card table, the armchair, and the sofa. Johnny Gee sat down.
“Girls, this here is Johnny Gee, who I ain’t seen since we done some time together. Johnny, this here is Rowanda and this here is Rolene. They twins.”
Johnny Gee shook hands with the girls, who didn’t look a day over eighteen and who were wearing matching green leather minidresses and knee-high white boots. Rowanda giggled. Johnny Gee could smell the bubblegum on her breath.
“Girls, why don’t you take a little walk and let me talk to my man, here,” said Moon.
“We ain’t got nothin’ to do-o-o,” whined Rolene.
“Do yo’ eyes and yo’ lips,” hissed Moon. The girls walked across the room and huddled in a corner.
“Whatchew got on yo’ mind, Johnny?” asked Moon.
“I need you to come with me up to Corrine’s place,” said Johnny Gee.
“Corrine’s place? You lookin’ fo’ pussy? You got all you can use right here, man,” said Moon. He pointed at the girls, who were standing in the light by the door.
“I could use some pussy, but I don’t need pussy,” said Johnny Gee. “What I need to do is to talk to Sheila. Me and her ran a con together a few years back. I just now found out she’s runnin’ the big cathouse in the capital city. Somethin’s come up, and I’ve got to see her. But I ain’t been up here in Springfield in years, man. I don’t know the lay of the land no more, you know? I need some coverage.”
“You in some kinda trouble? I seen you lookin’ better. Even in the joint you had some color. You be white as my socks!” The big black man threw his head back and laughed.
Johnny Gee grinned nervously.
“Trouble is what I’ve got,” he said. He sat down and filled his friend’s ear for ten minutes. The big man nodded once or twice, then squinted into the darkness and called his girls. They arrived in a fog of five-and-dime perfume. The big man peeled two bills off his roll and handed them the money.
“You all amuse yo’se’fs for a while. I got some bidness to take care of,” he said. The girls took the money and sashayed into the pool room.
“What you be needin’, Johnny?”
“I’m not real sure, Moon. I guess it’d be nice if you rode along with us, kinda noticeable-like. And the major, he keeps talkin’ about us needin’ backup.”
“You want to discourage the local talent from takin’ too close an interest in yo’ shit, is what you mean.”
“That sounds about right,” said Johnny Gee.
They walked into the front room of the pool hall and found Sam, corralled by Tiny. Tiny turned his head, and Moon gave him a signal. He stepped aside.
“That’s the biggest person I’ve ever seen in my life,” said Sam, who was standing in the door of the poolroom. “You didn’t tell me this was a black place,” he said.
“You didn’t ask,” said Johnny Gee.
They climbed in the Porsche, Johnny Gee squeezed crosswise into the jump seats, Moon in the front. Sam cranked the engine.
“Where to?” he asked.
“Thirteen twenty-eight Yardley,” said Johnny Gee. “Out near the north edge of town.”
“Sheila … ain’t she the one used to write you in the joint?” asked Moon.
“You wanna call a birthday card and a Christmas card writin’, yeah, she was the one.”
“Yo’ girl done moved up in the world, if she runnin’ Corrine’s, Johnny. Yardley ain’t no beat downtown street. Yardley be uptown.”
Sam hit the lights and turned the corner. “Which way do you want to go? Out the interstate?”
“Nah. Stay off the interstate. Take High Street.”
The drive to the north edge of town took them past the tree-lined grounds of the state capitol. Just on the other side of a small city park, Sam took a right, slowed down, and began checking house numbers.
“Seven hundred block. Six more to go.”
“This Yardley?” asked Johnny Gee.
“Yes indeed,” said Moon mockingly.
The houses lined the street in two neat rows. Most were wood-frame Victorians with porches and cupolas and gabled roofs, but some were squarish fieldstone structures with gently sloping roofs and dormer windows, a style that was popular in the 1920s. A few had gone to seed, been cut up into rooming houses and apartments, and clusters of mailboxes hung next to their front doors. One or two looked abandoned.
A few blocks down, the street changed. Garbage cans were neatly aligned next to driveways. Fresh paint adorned wood trim. Front porches had a porch swing at one end and a wicker glider at the other. Cars parked in driveways tended toward the Volvo/BMW end of the automotive spectrum. Lawns had been mown and raked, and children’s toys and bicycles were neatly arranged at the far end of driveways, behind locked gates.
“Corrine’s has moved to the yuppie side of town,” said Johnny Gee. “I’ll bet these Volvo drivers are just delighted to have this joint in the neighborhood.”
“Them Volvo drivers don’t have nothin’ to say about it,” said Moon.
Halfway down the thirteen-hundred block, a tall stone fence appeared on the right and ran a third of the way down the block. The house on the other side of the fence couldn’t be seen behind the trees and rhododendrons in the way. At the end of the fence, stone pillars framed a cast iron gate. A television surveillance camera was bolted to the top of one pillar, aimed at the bottom of the other pillar where a buzzer system intercom was mounted.
“This place looks like the front gate to Greenville,” said Moon.
“What’s Greenville?” asked Sam.
“The state pen,” said Johnny Gee.
Sam pulled the Porsche up to the gate and idled the engine.
Johnny Gee unfolded himself from the jump seat and stepped up to the intercom.
“Is this thirteen twenty-eight Yardley?” he called into the intercom speaker, pressing the talk button.
The television camera panned from the driveway and aimed itself directly on the intercom.
“Who’s speaking, please?” said a woman’s voice, Thai, lilting.
“Johnny Gee. I want to see Sheila.”
Pause.
“Are you expected?” asked the voice in the same sing-song tone.
“Nah. I just got to see her. Tell her it’s Johnny Gee.”
Pause.
“One moment, please.”
“What’s going on?” asked Sam.
“I told them I want to see Sheila, and they said to wait a minute.”
“Sir?” The metallic sing-song voice called from the intercom speaker.
Johnny Gee looked u
p at the camera.
“Yeah.”
Pause.
“Is that your vehicle?”
“Yeah.”
Pause.
“Is there anyone else in the vehicle?”
“Yeah. Two guys. Friends of mine.”
Pause.
“I don’t know whether we will be able to accommodate your friends.”
“Listen to me. We’re not looking for a party. I gotta see Sheila and my friends are comin’ with me. Now if there are any questions, tell her to talk to me over this thing.”
“What’s the problem?” asked Sam. He felt for the .45 under the seat, and tightened his fingers around its grip.
“I don’t know. Some bitch is sayin’ you guys can’t be fuckin’ accommodated or somethin’.”
They stared out the windshield of the car for a few moments, and the intercom crackled again.
“Johnny?” a woman’s voice said. “Johnny?”
“That’s Sheila,” said Johnny Gee.
“Sheila? That you?”
There was a pause.
“It’s been a long time, Johnny. Get in the car and tell the driver to back up a few feet. I’ll open the gate.”
Johnny Gee wrestled himself inside, Sam backed up, and the huge iron gates opened. He put the Porsche in gear and they drove through.
IT WASN’T A house, it was an L-shaped stone mansion set back a hundred yards from the street at the whip end of a winding gravel drive lined with privet hedge. The drive curled around a fountain and branched off into a smaller drive that led around the side of the mansion to a two-story garage that was at least as big as the rest of the houses on Yardley Street.
Sam braked the Porsche to a stop at the circle, front tires throwing gravel into the fountain, which was spotlit and had a marble cupid spouting water in its center.
“Jesus, look at this place,” said Johnny Gee.
Ivy climbed the walls of the mansion, twirling itself around cupolas at both corners of the “L.” There were at least thirty windows on the two front sides of the mansion, and lights shone through gauzy curtains in most of them. Two low steps led to the front door, twice the size of a normal one, of oak and leaded glass. The door opened. A girl in a black and white miniskirted maid’s uniform stood in the entranceway. A huge staircase could be seen behind her, disappearing into the upper reaches of the house. She motioned them in.
Rules of the Road Page 18