The Big Bad City

by McBain, Ed

  Q: You left after he paid you?

  A: Yes, we did.

  Q: What time was that, would you remember?

  A: Around three, three-thirty.

  Q: And what did you do then?

  A: In the morning, that is. Three-thirty in the morning.

  Q: Yes, I understand. What did you do then?

  A: We went to the van and drove off. We were coming up here to Calusa, you see. We had a long drive ahead.

  Q: Was Mr. Custer still alive when you left the club?

  A: I would hope so. He was certainly alive when we left his office.

  Q: And you say you drove off immediately after leaving the office?

  A: Well, within minutes. The van was running, it was already cool when I climbed inside. So, yes, we were on our way maybe five minutes after we said goodbye to Charlie.

  Q: He didn’t come out of his office to say goodbye or anything, did he?

  A: No. He told us he was going to have another beer and then go to bed. There were lots of empty beer bottles around. He drank a lot of beer.

  Q: So he’d finished the first beer already? The one he’d opened?

  A: He was just finishing it.

  Q: And he opened another bottle?

  A: I didn’t see him opening it.

  Q: But he said …

  A: Not while I was there.

  Q: He said he was going to have another beer …

  A: Yes.

  Q: … and then go to bed?

  A: Yes.

  Q: And you went out to the van …

  A: Yes.

  Q: … and left.

  A: Yes. The others were already in the van. They were all set to leave when we came down to join them.

  Q: What you say the others …

  A: In the van.

  Q: There were three of them in the van, is that correct?

  A: Yes. Waiting for us to come down with our money.

  Q: So it was just two of you who went up to the office, is that right?

  A: Yes. Just two of us.

  Q: You, of course …

  A: Yes.

  Q: … and who else? Who went with you to Mr. Custer’s office?

  A: Sal Roselli.

  14

  THE ONLY TIME THE MAN WAS ALONE WAS WHEN HE WAS COMING OUT HIS HOUSE EARLY IN THE morning, walking over to his garage, getting in his car to drive to work. That was the time to do it. Cause any other time he was with either family or other cops and Sonny had no quarrel with anyone cept him.

  Fact of the matter, he had no quarrel with him, either. Man hadn’t done nothin to him. What this was, it was insurance plain and simple. You got the man today so he wun’t haunt you the rest of your life, that’s what this was all about. Nobody ast the man’s Father to start a ruckus in his shop, causin Sonny to shoot in self-defense. Life was that way, man. Shit happened.

  So what this was going to be tomorrow morning was a clearing of the books. Like consolidating your debts when you had too much on too many credit cards. You borrowed from one source, you wiped out all the other debts. You had just one single debt then, you didn’t have to worry all the time about the collector comin round. Carella was the collector. You either worried about the collector or you set your worries aside. Tomorrow morning, Sonny’d be able to breathe free again, no more collector on his ass all the time.

  He’d driven past the house three times today alone. This was his fourth and final pass. Last time around, some red-haired lady wearing eyeglasses came out carrying something over to the garage. On the path between the house and the garage was where Sonny planned to do it. Lay in wait for the man, surprise him. Redhead had glanced at the Honda as he drove on by, not the kind of hard look the big black cop had give him yesterday. Just a curious glance, but it was enough to make Sonny think maybe she’d spotted the car doin its dry runs and it was time to quit. This time he drove past slow but not too conspicuous. Man went to work at the crack of dawn, half the neighborhood was still asleep at that hour. Sound of the Desert Eagle be like a cannon goin off in the stillness, this was one powerful pistol he had here. Man comes out his house, starts walkin to his car, gets shot in the face. In, out, been nice to know you.

  The house looked like the one in that movie Psycho, where the guy was runnin aroun in drag stabbin people. Hard to believe a cop livin in a place looked like it was from olden times. Once, drivin by at night when he was still thinkin maybe the best time to do it was after dark, he could see inside to where a floor lamp was standin, looked like the shade was all different-colored jewels. Touched his heart cause he seemed to recall a similar lamp when he was comin along, maybe in his grandma’s house, though he couldn’t imagine her possessing anything looked like it was jewels. Took him back, though. To someplace he couldn’t hardly remember. Touched him.

  Do it in broad daylight, shoot the man in the face and run off to where he’d have parked the car. What he planned on doin was giving the Honda back to Coral tonight, thank her proper in bed with a yard and a half. Then go out around midnight, boost a car on the street, use the stolen vehicle for the thing tomorrow. He planned to wake up at five in the morning, drive up here to Riverhead, be in position by six-thirty latest, case the man decided to get to work even earlier than any human being had cause to.

  Red-haired lady coming out of the house again, busy, busy, busy. Carrying garbage to the bins on the side of the house this time. Figured her to be in her sixties, maybe she was a maid, did cops have maids? In which case, how come she wun’t black, huh? Or maybe a nanny. Did he have small kids? Woman hesitated on her way, gave the Honda another look as it went by. Sonny didn’t speed up, didn’t do nothin to indicate he was in any way troubled by the redhead’s scrutiny. She was lookin at a car’d be ancient history by sundown tonight. Wearin glasses, probly squintin through ’em, tryin’a catch the numbers on the license plate. So long, lady, been nice to know you.

  Tomorrow mornin, Carella be history, too.

  Sal Roselli was giving a piano lesson when they arrived at his house that Tuesday morning. His wife said he’d be finished at eleven o’clock, would they like to wait inside for him, where it was cool? They elected to sit out back in the sun. From inside the house, they could hear some kid murdering something that used to be classical before he got his hands on it. Or she. From the pounding, Carella automatically assumed it was a boy in there venting his fury. Except for the cacophony, the neighborhood was still. Roselli’s two little girls were in the pool, their mother watching them from the kitchen window. The detectives almost dozed.

  Roselli was wearing black jeans, loafers without socks, and a white, long-sleeved shirt with the cuffs rolled up when he joined them at a few minutes past the hour. He appeared sleepy-eyed, though it was already late in the morning. He explained to the detectives that he’d been out jamming late the night before, sitting in with a bunch of guys he knew who had a steady gig down in The Quarter.

  “It’s tough to find steady work these days,” he said. “I give lessons to supplement my income, got to pay the mortgage, hm? There’s only one piano player in a band, you know. In a marching band, you can have seventy-six trombones, and a hundred and twelve cornets, but no piano at all. A rock group? Sometimes a keyboard, but just as often not. A symphony orchestra? One piano, but only sometimes.”

  “I used to play clarinet when I was a kid,” Brown said.

  Roselli gave him the disinterested nod of a professional who didn’t give a damn about the music lessons amateurs took when they were kids.

  “So what brings you out here again?” he asked, and took a seat facing them. The detectives were looking into the sun. They shifted their chairs.

  “Boyle’s Landing,” Carella said.

  “September first, four years ago,” Brown said.

  “Payday.”

  “Charlie Custer’s office.”

  “What happened in there, Sal?”

  First-name basis now, no more polite bullshit. You lied to us, Sal, so you’re not Mr. Roselli anymor
e. You are Sal, and we are cops, Sal.

  “In where?” Roselli said.

  “Custer’s office.”

  “When you and Katie went up there.”

  “It was Davey who went up there,” Roselli said.

  “Not according to him.”

  “Then he’s lying.”

  “Not according to Katie, either.”

  Roselli looked at them.

  “Katie’s dead,” he said.

  “She wasn’t dead when she gave her statement to Detective Morris Bloom in Calusa, Florida, four years ago.”

  “How’d you …?” Roselli started, and then closed his mouth.

  “Sal?”

  He looked away.

  “Want to tell us what happened that night, Sal?”

  He turned back sharply.

  “What happened was Custer got drunk and fell in the river,” he said. “That’s what happened. Just what I told you before.”

  “Only after a second visit, Sal.”

  “You neglected to mention the drowning the first time around.”

  “You said you didn’t think it was important.”

  “How do you feel about being in Custer’s office?”

  “Alone with him and Katie?”

  “How do you feel about that?”

  “Do you think that’s important?”

  “All right, look, I didn’t want to get involved.”

  “Involved?”

  “You were here investigating Katie’s murder, I didn’t want to get involved, that’s all.”

  “We’re still investigating her murder, Sal.”

  “And I still don’t want to get involved.”

  “Why’d you lie to us, Sal?”

  “Because I had nothing to do with it.”

  “With what?”

  “Charlie drowning.”

  “But he drowned after you left, didn’t he?”

  Silence.

  “Sal?”

  “He drowned after the band was long gone, isn’t that what you told us?”

  “Yes.”

  “So how could you have had anything to do with it?”

  “I didn’t.”

  “Then why’d you lie to us about being in his office?”

  Silence.

  “Sal?”

  “Why’d you …?”

  “Okay, I was trying to protect Katie, okay?”

  “But Katie’s dead.”

  “You told me she was a nun.”

  “Yes?”

  “Okay, I didn’t want it to reflect upon her.”

  “Didn’t want what to reflect upon her?”

  “Didn’t want it to tarnish her memory.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Charlie drowning.”

  “Would somehow tarnish her memory?”

  “If it got out.”

  “If what got out?”

  “If I told you.”

  “Told us what?”

  “What happened.”

  “What did happen, Sal?”

  Silence.

  “Sal?”

  “Tell us, Sal.”

  “What happened, Sal?”

  “She shoved him over the railing,” Roselli said.

  “I can’t tell you what a great job I think you kids did,” Charlie says. He’s been drinking too much and his speech is slurred. A bottle of beer in one hand, he staggers as he walks to the safe, catches his balance, says, “Oops,” gives a gurgly little giggle and then grins in broad apology and winks at Katie. He raises the bottle in a belated toast. “Here’s to next time,” he says, and tilts the bottle to his mouth and drinks again. Sal is hoping he won’t pass out before he opens the safe and pays them.

  Charlie is wearing a wrinkled white linen suit, he looks as if he’s auditioning for the role of Big Daddy in Cat. Chomping on a cigar, belching around it, he takes it out of his mouth only to swig more beer. He finally sets the bottle down on top of the safe. This is a big old Mosler that sits on the floor, he has some difficulty kneeling down in front of it, first because he’s so fat, and next because he’s so drunk. Sal is really beginning to worry now that they’ll have to wait till morning to get paid. How’s Charlie even going to remember the combination, much less see the numbers on the dial?

  It is unbearably hot here in the office. The window air conditioner is functioning, but only minimally, and Charlie has thrown open the French doors to the deck, hoping to catch a stray breeze. Outside, there is the sound of insects and wilder things, the cries of animals in the deep dark. Only the alligators are silent.

  Katie is slumped in one of the big black leather chairs, exhausted and sweaty, her hair hanging limp, her T-shirt clinging to her. She has her legs stretched out, the mini riding high on her thighs, she looks sort of like a thirteen-year-old who’s just come home from the junior high hop. Charlie is kneeling in front of the safe, having difficulty with his balance, reciting the combination out loud as if there’s no one in the room with him, three to the right, stop on twenty. Two to the left, past twenty, stop on seven. One to the right, stop on thirty-four—but the safe won’t open. So he goes through the same routine once again, and then another time after that until he finally hits the right numbers, and boldly yanks down the handle, and flamboyantly flings open the safe door. All grand movements. Everything big and baroque. Like drunken Charlie himself.

  The night’s proceeds are in there. Charlie’s crowd is composed largely of teenagers, and they pay in cash. He starts counting out the bills, has to count them three times, too, before he gets it right. He puts the rest of the money back in the safe, hurls the door shut, gives the dial a dramatic twist. He’s now holding a wad of hundred-dollar bills in his left hand. With his right hand, he braces himself against the safe and pushes himself to his feet.

  He turns to Katie where she’s sprawled half-asleep in the black leather chair.

  “Now, young missy,” he says, and staggers over to her. “You want this money?”

  Katie opens her eyes.

  “Would you like to get paid?” he says.

  “That’s why we’re here, boss,” Sal says, smiling, and moves to where Charlie’s standing in front of the chair.

  “You want this money?” Charlie asks again, and shakes the bills in Katie’s face.

  “Stop doing that,” she says sleepily, and flaps her hands on the air in front of her, trying to wave the money away.

  “Sweet missy, you want this money, here’s what you got to do,” he says, and shoves the wad of bills into the right-hand pocket of his jacket. They bulge there like a sudden tumor. He unzips his fly. And all at once he’s holding himself in his hand.

  “Come on, Charlie, put that away,” Sal says. For some reason, he is still smiling. He cannot imagine why he is still smiling, unless it’s because the situation is so absurd.

  “Whut you want me to put away, boy?” Charlie says. “The money or my pecker?”

  “Come on, Charlie.”

  Sal is no longer smiling.

  “You want me to put this money back in the safe? Or you want me to put my pecker in Katie’s mouth?”

  “Come on, Charlie.”

  “Which?” Charlie says. “Cause that’s the way it’s gonna be, boy. Either the little girl sucks my dick, or you don’t get paid.”

  Sal doesn’t know how to deal with this. He’s a city boy unused to the ways of wildland crackers. He thinks for a moment he’ll run outside and get the others, all for one and one for all, and all that. But Charlie has grabbed Katie’s chin in his hand now, and he is moving in on her with a drunk’s bullheaded determination, waving his bulging purple cock at her the way he waved the wad of money only minutes ago. There is a look of such unutterable horror on Katie’s face that Sal knows this is going to be resolved in the very next instant without any help from the rest of the band, without any help from him, either, for that matter. City-boy coward that he is, he stands frozen to the spot, watching, incapable of movement, unable to do anything but repeat, “Come on,
Charlie.”

  Katie comes out of the chair like a lioness.

  She shoves at Charlie’s chest, and he staggers backward toward the open French doors.

  “Hey,” he says, “I was only …”

  But she is on him again, shoving out at him again, a hundred and ten pounds of sweaty blind fury pushing the fat drunken fool out onto the deck, and then lunging at him one last time, her fingers widespread on his chest, a hiss escaping her lips as she pushes him over the railing. There is a splash when he hits the water, and then, instantly, a terrible thrashing that tells them the alligators are getting to him even before he surfaces.

  Katie is breathing very hard. The sweaty T-shirt clings to her, Sal can see her nipples puckering it in excitement, she has just killed a man.

  “The money,” Katie says.

  “Katie, you killed him.”

  “The money. It was in his pocket.”

  “Fuck the money,” Sal says.

  “Do you remember the combination?”

  “No. Let’s get out of here. Jesus, Katie, you killed him.”

  “The combination. Do you remember it?”

  On the river below, there is an appalling stillness.

  Three to the right, stop on twenty, two to the left, past twenty, stop on seven. One to the right, stop on thirty-four.

  He recites the numbers aloud to her as she slowly turns the dial to the right, and to the left, and then to the right again. She opens the door. From the wad of money in the safe, she peels off the money due them, and returns the rest to the safe, and closes the door, and twists the dial to lock it again. Sal watches as she wipes the dial and the handle clean. She looks around one last time, and then they leave the office.

  In the van, Sal says, “Got the bread, let’s go,” and Katie pulls her T-shirt away from her body, encouraging the cool flow from the air conditioner.

  Rigoberto Mendez was setting up his bar at the Siesta when Ollie Weeks caught up with him at one o’clock that afternoon. Weeks ordered himself a beer, for which he did not offer to pay. Sitting at the bar, Ollie slurped noisily and happily from the Heineken bottle, watching Mendez as he polished glasses and checked whiskey levels.