Money, Money, Money

by Ed McBain

  Carella wished with all his heart that this case would reveal itself as clearly to him as Lucy’s throat had been revealed to the count all those years back when Carella first saw the black-and-white film on television, the count’s head descending, his lips drawing back, the fangs bared, Carella had almost wet his pants.

  The money in Jerry Hoskins’ wallet was real, too. No question about that, the Federal Reserve had run it through their machines, the hundred-dollar bills were genuine. But Jerry Hoskins had worked for Wadsworth and Dodds, and the man who’d set up the flying arrangement with Cass Ridley also worked for W&D, though there seemed to be some confusion about whether or not Randolph Biggs wasalso a Texas Ranger, which Carella sincerely doubted—but that, too, was a guess.

  Lots of guesswork here, no hard facts.

  He wondered what time it was in Texas.

  He looked up at the wall clock, opened the bottom drawer of his desk, took out his massive directory of law enforcement agencies, found a listing for the Texas Department of Public Safety headquarters in Austin, figured somebody would be there no matterwhat time it was, and dialed the number. He told the woman who answered the phone what he was looking for, was connected to a sergeant named Dewayne Ralston, repeated everything again, and was asked to “Hang on, Detective.” He hung on. Some five minutes later, Ralston came back onto the line.

  “Nobody in the Ranger Division named Randolph Biggs,” he said. “You landed yourself an imposter, Detective.”

  “While I’ve got you on the line,” Carella said, “could you check for a criminal record?”

  “Don’t go away,” Ralston said.

  Carella didn’t go away. Across the room, he could see Kling at his desk, hunched over a computer. Cotton Hawes was just coming through the railing that divided the squadroom from the corridor outside. Telephones were ringing. In one corner of the room, the squad’s meager Christmas tree blinked holiday cheer to the street outside. From the Clerical Office down the hall, he could smell the aroma of coffee brewing. This was a very familiar place to him. He felt suddenly sad and could not have explained why.

  “You still there?” Ralston asked.

  “Still here.”

  “No record on a Randolph Biggs, B-I-G-G-S. But if this is the same dude, he turned up dead in Piedras Rosas two days ago. Found him floating in a tub of water with a plugged-in cattle prod. Death by electrocution. Apparent suicide.”

  “That makes two,” Carella said.

  “Pardon?”

  “One of his colleagues was murdered up here on Christmas Eve.”

  “Looks like you got your hands full,” Ralston said.

  “Looks that way,” Carella said.

  THE PHONE ON Ollie Weeks’s desk rang some five minutes later.

  “Weeks,” he said.

  “You handlin that murder happened last week?” a man’s voice asked.

  “Which murder would that be?” Ollie asked.

  Up here in the Eight-Eight, there were 10,247 murders every day of the year.

  “The newspaper said he was Jerry Hoskins,” the man said. “To me, he was Frank Holt.”

  “Who’s this?” Ollie asked at once.

  “Nev’ mine who’s this,” the man said. “I know who killed him.”

  Ollie pulled a pad into place.

  “Tell me your name,” he said.

  “Is they a reward?”

  “Maybe. I can’t deal with you unless you tell me your name.”

  “Tito Gomez,” the man said.

  “Can you come up here in half an hour?”

  “I rather meet you someplace else.”

  “Sure. Where?”

  “The Eight’ Street footpath into Grover. Fourth bench in.”

  Ollie looked up at the wall clock.

  “Make it a quarter to six,” he said.

  “See you,” Tito said, and hung up.

  Ollie hit the files.

  IT DID NOT TAKE Wiggy and the two Mexicans long to discover that what they had in common was a hundred keys of cocaine. It also appeared they had each been stiffed by a company that purported to publish books, but which instead seemed to be involved in the transport and sale of controlled substances. They did not yet know they were fucking with something much bigger here. For the time being their shared grievances were enough to provide motivation for what they planned to do sometime tomorrow.

  They were discussing all this over beers in a bar on Grover Avenue, not too distant from Grover Park, where Ollie and Gomez would be meeting twenty minutes from now. In many ways, the big bad city was just a small town.

  “I can’t get over these people payin you queer money for your goods,” Wiggy was saying. “Which by the way was very high quality shit, I have to tell you.”

  “Gracias, señor,”Ortiz said, pride of product glowing in his eyes.

  “Which is a shame,” Wiggy said, “them stiffing you that way. But I have to tell you the moneyI paidthemwas hundred-percent genuine American currency, and I want it back cause they sent two blondes to take it away from me.”

  This was not entirely true. Wiggy had never paid a single penny to Hoskins or Holt or whoever he was. He had shot him in the head instead.

  “They stoleyour money, too?” Ortiz asked incredulously.

  “For damn sure.”

  Neither was this entirely true. They had, in fact, taken the money from his safe, but this was not stealing from him. This was collecting money rightfully owed them for the hundred keys of cocaine they’d delivered as promised.

  “So they are stealing fromall of us,” Villada said.

  “Basic thieves is what they are,” Wiggy said.

  “Like us,” Ortiz said, and all three men burst out laughing.

  “So what we’re gonna do tomorrow …” Wiggy said.

  AT FIRST, it looked as if there was nothing on him but a marijuana violation two years ago. But at the time of the bust, Tito Gomez—whose street name was Tigo—had worked for a place named King Auto Body, and this rang a bell with Ollie. So he cross-checked the files and lo and behold, there it was. A massive conspiracy arrest some six months back. Ollie went to his desk and phoned Carella.

  “Steve,” he said, “I got a call from somebody says he knows who killed Hoskins. I’m meeting him in Grover Park ten minutes from now. You want to join us?”

  “Where in Grover?” Carella asked.

  “WE GO UP THERE TOGETHER,” Wiggy said. “We tell them give us the fuckin money you owe us or you all dead men. Your million-seven. My million-nine.”

  Nobody owed Wiggy anything. But he already believed himself the true owner of the million-nine the blondes had taken in rightful payment for the drugs he’d purchased.

  “Fockin crooks,” Villada said, shaking his head.

  Ortiz was shaking his head, too. But only because he didn’t like the plan. His reasoning was simple. Threats and warnings were one thing. Reality was another. In his broken English, he explained that between yesterday and today, nobody up at Wadsworth and Dodds could have gathered together the million-seven his partner had demanded, much less the million-nine their new associate was seeking. That came to a total of three-million-six …

  “Which ees a ho lot of money,” Ortiz explained.

  Wiggy was thinking there was once a time in his life when two dollars for a water pistol seemed like a whole lot of money.

  TITO GOMEZ was sitting on the fourth bench into the park when Carella got there at ten minutes to six that Thursday night. The two seemed to be hitting it off extremely well. Gomez was smoking a cigarette and listening to Ollie intently as he concluded what was apparently a joke because Gomez burst out laughing just as Carella approached.

  “Hey, Steve!” Ollie called. “You know the one about the guy who puts a condom on his piano?”

  “Yes,” Carella said.

  He sat on the bench beside Gomez, the two detectives flanking him like mismatched bookends. “This the man you were telling me about?” he asked Ollie.

  �
��This is him,” Ollie said. “Tito Gomez. Otherwise known as Tigo. Meet Detective Carella, Tigo.”

  Tigo nodded.

  “So I understand you want to talk to us about something,” Carella said.

  “Yeah, but I ain’t got all day here. You got any more detectives you need to call?” he asked Ollie.

  “No, this is all of us,” Ollie said affably. “He says he knows who killed Jerry Hoskins, ain’t that interesting? He wants to know if there’s a reward.”

  “We can maybe come up with a little something,” Carella said.

  “What do you meanmaybe?”

  “We can talk to the commissioner, see what this case means to him.”

  He was thinking with counterfeit super-bills somehow involved, the commissioner might be able to come up with a little something.

  “What I have in mind is fifty thousand dollars,” Tigo said.

  “That’s a lot of money, Tigo.”

  “But that’s what makes the world go round, no?” Tigo said, and grinned. “Money, money, money.”

  “Well, that all depends on the value of the information you have for us, eh,amigo?” Ollie said, still affably.

  Tigo didn’t like to be called“amigo.” His father was from Puerto Rico, true enough, but his mother was black, and he was proud of his heritage on her side of the family. As pleasantly as he could—these were, after all, cops he was dealing with—he said, “I don’t speak Spanish,amigo,” which was a lie, but which seemed to make his point.

  “Oh, sorry,” Ollie said, “I didn’t realize. So tell us why you wanted to see us.”

  “There was this buy on Decatur Av?” Tigo said, making it sound like a question. “Guy runs a posse from a crib on the whole second floor there, knocked out the walls of three apartments? He brings up dope from Mexico, Colombia, Peru, sells it in ten-kilo lots for forty, fifty a pop, whatever the traffic will bear. I’ve been workin for him almost two years now, you’d think he’d start talkin bout makin me a partner, but no. He’s still got me on salary …”

  So that’s why he’s ratting him out, Carella thought.

  “… treats me like a fuckin courier, don’t get me started. I used to make more money driving the truck. I used to drive a tow truck for this auto body shop on Mason.”

  “What’s this guy’s name?” Carella said.

  “First tell me how much the commissioner’s gonna okay on this,” Tigo said.

  “Well, we haven’t talked to him yet,” Ollie said affably. “We have togo to him with something, you see. We tell him there’s this guymaybehas information, he’ll say go take a walk, fellas.”

  “Can you at least tell us when this buy went down?” Carella asked.

  “Sure,” Tigo said. “Four, five days ago.”

  “When exactly?”

  “What’s today?”

  “The twenty-eighth.”

  “So it must’ve been … let me see.” He began counting back on his fingers. “Last Saturday night? When was that? Christmas Eve?”

  “No, the twenty-third,” Ollie said.

  “So that’s when it was. Like I said. Four, five days ago.”

  “Where?” Carella asked.

  “I told you, this crib on Decatur. It’s these three apartments, this person we’re talking about knocked out the …”

  “What’s the address?”

  “1280 Decatur.”

  “Were you there when the buy went down?”

  “Yeah. This dude was waitin in the front room while we tested the shit. He was supposed to get a mill-nine for the hundred keys.”

  “What was his name?”

  “Frank Holt. But his picture in the paper said he was Jerry Hoskins. The same guy, right?”

  “The same guy,” Carella said. “Tell us what happened.”

  “This is where the bus stops,” Tigo said. “Go talk to the commissioner.”

  “Suppose we go to 1280 Decatur instead, talk to whoever’s got the second floor there, tell him his trusted employee just ratted him out?” Carella said.

  “Now, now, Steve,” Ollie said affably. “The man hasn’t ratted out anyone yet, have you, Tigo?”

  “Not till I see the green.”

  “You just told us you participated in a drug deal, do you realize that?” Carella said. He was thinking this was an odd reversal of roles, him playing Bad Cop to Ollie’s Good.

  “Gee, did I?” Tigo said. “Are you wired, Detective? If not, who’s your witness? Another cop? A bullshit bust, and you know it.”

  “I can tell you right now, nobody’s giving you fifty thousand dollars so we can nail a two-bit drug dealer in Diamondback.”

  “Even if it’s murder?”

  “Even if he raped the Mayor’s mother.”

  “How muchare you prepared to give me?”

  Sounding like a fucking lawyer all at once.

  “You tell us you witnessed a murder, you give us all the details, you agree to testify at trial, we can maybe scrape up two or three …”

  “Goodbye, gentlemen,” Tigo said, and got off the bench.

  “Sit down, punk,” Ollie said.

  Tigo looked surprised.

  “Isaidsit the fuckdown.”

  Tigo sat.

  “Let me tell you what you’re gonna do for us,” Ollie said.

  “OKAY, I got a better idea,” Wiggy was telling the two Mexicans. “We go in heavy, all three of us. Semi-automatics under our overcoats. We hold the mother-fuckers hostage.”

  Villada looked at Ortiz.

  “We go in early tomorrow morning. They got the whole fourth floor, ain’t nobody but us gonna know we’re in there holdin guns on them. We stay there till they come up with the cash.”

  “The banks will be closed till Tuesday,” Ortiz said.

  “It’s the long weekend,” Villada said, nodding agreement.

  “Man, they stole a mill-nine from me, you think they put that in abank?These people are thieves, man. They got that moneystashed someplace, is what. All we got to do is ask that white-haired fuck to take us to wherever it is.”

  “What aboutour money?” Ortiz asked.

  “We’ll get that, too, don’t worry,” Wiggy said. “One thing I know for sure, you stick a piece in some dude’s face, he’s gonna give you every fuckin nickel he has.”

  Actually, Wiggy didn’t give a rat’s ass about their money. Far as he was concerned, they could eat tacos and beans the rest of they fuckin lives. All he needed them for was the extra muscle they brought to the gig. He was already figuring they would be the ones who stayed behind to watch the others while him and Halloway went to retrieve the money that was rightfully his.

  Ortiz was ahead of him.

  “Who goes for the money?” he asked.

  “Halloway. Their boss.”

  “Who goeswith him?”

  “Any one of us,” Wiggy said.

  “I think it should be either me or Cesar,” Ortiz said.

  “Sure, whoever,” Wiggy said, and grinned.

  TIGO SAID NO, he would not go in with no wire on him.

  Ollie said either he wore the wire or they would bust his ass for the Fire Lane Scam.

  “What the fuck is the Fire Lane Scam?” Tigo asked.

  “You drove the tow truck, remember?” Ollie said affably. In fact, he was actually smiling.

  “What’s the Fire Lane Scam?” Carella asked.

  “What I done when Tigo called me,” Ollie said, “was see what we had on him in the files. Aside from a bullshit marijuana violation two years ago …”

  “I was acquitted.”

  “I told you. Bullshit. In fact, I was just about to tell Detective Carella here that there didn’t seem to be anything else on you. So I figured you were clean.”