by Ed McBain
“I am.”
“Except for participating in a drug deal last Saturday night,” Carella said.
“You got only my word for that,” Tigo said, making a joke. In fact, he grinned at them as if expecting them to laugh.
Ollie didn’t laugh, but he grinned back.
“Your record said you were employed by King Auto Body when you were busted for the weed,” Ollie said. “So I cross-checked and found out why that name sounded familiar. I found a big, big arrest six months ago, Tigo. The Fire Lane Scam. For which Joey King—no relation to Larry—is doing a five-and-dime at Castleview. You know what I’m talking about now, Tigo?”
“No, I don’t.”
“You were driving a tow truck for him, right?”
“That’s right. I went out on calls for dead batteries, flat tires, lockouts, like that.”
“You also went out on calls for Berry Appliances, who were in on the scam with Joey.”
“I never heard of anything called Berry Appliances.”
“George and Michael Berry,” Ollie said. “They used to sell washing machines, refrigerators, stoves, all that shit. A shop on Twelfth and Moore, you remember it?”
“No.”
“Had a little alley running alongside the shop, remember the alley?”
“No.”
“What it was,” Ollie explained to Carella, “George Berry went to the Fire Department and greased a few palms—they all went down together, by the way. Joey King, George and his brother, and the two Fire Department assholes who signed papers declaring the alley a so-called fire lane. They’re all exercising in the yard upstate.”
“Ho-hum,” Tigo said.
“Yeah, ho-hum,” Ollie said, and turned back to Carella again.
“What it was, George and his brother posted these signs on the walls of the alley saying it was a fire lane, and you couldn’t park there, or your car would be towed if you did. Guy comes back, finds his car towed, he reads the small print on the bottom of the sign, it tells him he can recover the car at King’s Auto Body Shop on Mason Avenue. What Tigo here did was make a sweep of the alley every few hours, tow any car parked there. There were always five, six cars in the alley, nobody paid any attention to the signs. Tigo picked up the cars, towed them over to King’s. When the owner came to collect his car, Joey told him it would cost a hundred bucks to release it. You towed maybe twenty cars a night, didn’t you, Tigo? People in this city have no fuckin respect for the law. ‘No Parking’ signs all over the alley, ‘Fire Lane,’ they just ignored them. A hundred bucks a car, that’s two thousand bucks these guys were splitting every night of the week. That’s like fourteen grand a week, how much do we make, Steve?”
“Not that much,” Carella said.
“Not even in a good week,” Ollie said. “I keep tellin you, we’re in the wrong business.”
“Where’d you get all this shit?” Tigo said, shaking his head as if in disbelief.
“It’s all in the record. You were driving the tow truck. But you told the D.A. you were just a salaried employee who didn’t know anything wrong was going on, and they believed you. You were just a kid, they had bigger fish to fry. But guess what Joey King told me?”
“You talked toJoey?”
“Yeah, gee, I did. I figured I might need insurance if you got all pissy on me. So I called Castleview just before I left the squadroom, had a nice little chat with him. He told me they were paying you twenty bucks for every car you brought in. Three, four hundred bucks a night. Something like two grand a week. You were in on the deal, Tigo.”
“I was a salaried employee. Go look at my social security records.”
“Salaryplus,Tigo. You were part of a conspiracy. You should be up there at Castleview with them.”
“But I ain’t,” Tigo said.
“Ah, but you could be. Joey seems to think early parole sounds very nice indeed.”
Tigo looked at him.
“He’s ready to rat you out, friend, ah yes.”
“You’re full of shit,” Tigo said.
“Well, maybe so,” Ollie said affably.
“Tigo,” Carella said, “I think he’s got us.”
10 .
CHARMAINE LOOKED UP when the three of them came out of the elevator. The moment the doors closed behind them, guns came out from under their coats. She was reaching for a button on her desk when Wiggy said, “Don’t, Fatso.” This hurt. A moment later he slapped her across the face to let her know he was serious. This hurt even more. One of the Mexicans was already rushing down the long corridor flanked with posters of books nobody ever heard of. Wiggy went directly into Halloway’s office.
He was hunched over his computer keyboard, his jacket draped over the back of his chair, his bow tie hanging unknotted and loose around his neck, the top button of his shirt unbuttoned, his sleeves rolled up. He jerked his head around the moment Wiggy burst into the room, and then immediately stabbed at one of the keys on the computer. Four key strokes would have allowed him to escape the program and the machine: the Windows key to the right of the space bar, the Up arrow, the Enter key, and the Enter key again. Once the computer was shut down, no one would be able to boot it again without the proper password. Halloway managed to hit the Windows key, and was about to tap the Up arrow when Wiggy said, “Don’t, Whitey.” Halloway hesitated. For a moment, it seemed he might complete the action, anyway. Just tap the remaining three keys, and shut down the computer, effectively locking it.
But the gun in Wiggy’s hand was very big and rather ugly.
THERE WERE EIGHT EMPLOYEES altogether, all of them seated around the long conference table now. Richard Halloway sat at the head of the table, as befitted his status as publisher. David Good from Publicity sat on his left, Karen Andersen from Sales on his right. There was an editor named Michael Garrity, and another editor named Henry Daggert. There was Charmaine, the fat receptionist, and someone named George Young from the stock room, and someone else named Betty Alweiss from the Art Department. Eight of them in all. They all looked frightened.
Wiggy and the two Mexicans leaned against three of the walls, weapons in their hands. Wiggy was holding a Cobray M11-9 he had purchased last night for five hundred dollars from a man named Little Nicholas in Diamondback. Villada and Ortiz were each carrying Mark XIX Desert Eagle pistols. The clock on the conference room wall read twenty minutes to ten. They had caught everyone by surprise, and now they were about to lay their demands on the table.
The Mexicans had decided to let Wiggy do all the talking. Ortiz had objected to this at first, on the grounds that his English was impeccable. Villada had convinced him at last. The men leaned against the walls nonchalantly. Their weapons—dangling casually in their hands—looked almost nonthreatening. The three of them figured they had nothing to worry about here with these bookish types. Little did they know.
“Now, this here’s the story,” Wiggy said. “Our grievance is a mill-seven for my frens here, and a mill-nine for me. We don’t know where you keep your stash, but one of you’s gonna go with one of us to get the cash an’ bring it back here. Then we’ll all be on our way, and you alls can go home to enjoy the ress of the holiday. Do I make myself clear?”
“We don’t have that kind of money,” Halloway said.
“We’re bettin you do,” Wiggy said. “We’re bettin you’ll go get it before …”
He looked up at the clock.
“Before six o’clock tonight. That’s eight hours from now, more or less. Cause for every hour we sit here without goin for the money, we’re gonna hafta shoot one of you. Eight hours, eight people. By six o’clock, you all be dead less’n we has our money. Do I make myself clear now?”
The room was silent.
“I’ll have to make some calls,” Halloway said.
“We’ll be listening,” Wiggy said.
The Mexicans were smiling.
Wiggy figured he had made himself clear.
THE MEN OF THE 87th Detective Squad couldn’t seem to kee
p their minds on business at their weekly Friday-morning, think-tank meeting. Carella was trying to tell them what he and Ollie had learned from Tito “Tigo” Gomez. He was trying to tell them that if Tigo could be trusted, a dope dealer named Walter “Wiggy” Wiggins was responsible for the murder of Jerome “Jerry”Hoskins, alias Frank Holt …
“Was that in this precinct?” Lieutenant Byrnes asked.
“No, but the murdered woman was.”
“What murdered woman?” Andy Parker asked.
He was dressed for undercover work today, which meant he hadn’t shaved, and he was wearing jeans and a black turtleneck sweater and a brown leather jacket and motorcycle boots. He thought he looked like an upscale drug dealer. Actually, he looked like a slob.
“The woman who got eaten by lions,” Meyer said.
“Ha-ha, very funny,” Parker said.
“This happened a week ago, where have you been?” Brown said.
“She got stabbed with an ice pick first,” Carella explained.
“What’s Hoskins got to do with her?” Byrnes asked impatiently. He was thinking if any of this had happened in some other precinct, he’d be glad to get it off his plate.
“He paid her to pick up some dope in Mexico,” Meyer said.
“Which he later sold to this Wiggy character,” Carella said.
“Who paidhim with a bullet in the head.”
“Here in the Eight-Seven?”
“No, the Eight-Eight. Fat Ollie caught it.”
“So let him keep it.”
“He also caught one-fifth of the Ridley case.”
“Who’s Ridley?” Parker asked.
“The lady who got eaten by lions,” Kling said.
“Ha-ha, very funny,” Parker said.
“How can you catch one-fifth of a case?” Willis asked.
“Her leg,” Meyer said.
“Am I supposed to be following this?” Parker asked.
“Nobody else is,” Byrnes said. “Why should you be an exception?”
“The point is,” Carella said, somewhat edgily, “we’re sending Gomez in with a wire.”
“Why?” Brown asked.
“Cause we’ve maybe got a line on the perp in a homicide.”
“This Wiggy character?”
“Right. Who maybe killed Jerry Hoskins, who for sure hired Cass Ridley to go to Mexico for him.”
“Andwecaught the Ridley case, is what you’re saying.”
“Four-fifths of her.”
“Why’s this so important, anyway?” Parker asked, and looked around the room, and shrugged, and said, “Don’t anybody want a bagel?” and went to help himself from the tray on Byrnes’s desk.
“There’s funny money involved,” Carella said.
“So let the Secret Service worry,” Byrnes said.
“They are worrying,” Carella said. “They grabbed eight grand in queer bills from a two-bit burglar and gave him real currency in return.”
“The lunatics have taken over the asylum,” Hawes said.
“I don’t like complicated cases,” Parker said.
“Neither do I,” Byrnes said.
“Well, that’s truly unfortunate,” Carella said, “but I didn’t ask tocatch this one, either.”
“What the hell’s wrong withyou this morning?” Parker asked.
“I’m trying to make some sense of this goddamn case, that’s all, and you guys are …”
“Relax, okay? Have a bagel.”
“There’s dope involved here,” Carella said, gathering steam, “and counterfeit money, and the Secret Service, and Christ knows what …”
“So let our new President handle it,” Parker said.
“Sure.”
“Our beloved flounder,” Willis said.
“Lethimask the Secret Service what’s going on here,” Brown said.
“Sure.”
“Next motorcade he’s in,” Hawes said, “he can wave out of his limo and ask them what they know about a lady got eaten by lions.”
“Go on, Steve, have a bagel,” Parker said.
“I don’t want a bagel,” Carella said.
“You know who woulda made a better President than the one we got now?” Hawes said.
“Who?” Kling asked.
“Martin Sheen.”
“The guy onThe West Wing, you’re right!”
“He’d call the Secret Service on the carpet, tell them to quit handing out good money for bad.”
“No, you know who’d do that? If he was President?” Willis said.
“Who?” Kling asked.
“Harrison Ford.”
“Air Force One!”
“President James Marshall!”
“Oh, yeah!” Brown said. “He was maybe thebest President we ever had. Remember what he said? ‘Peace ain’t merely the absence of conflict, but the presence of justice.’ Man, that’s fancy talking.”
“Remember what thebad guy said?” Willis asked.
“Who cares what bad guys say?” Parker said, and took another bagel from the tray.
“He said, ‘You murdered a hundred thousand Iraqis to save a nickel a gallon on gas. Don’t lecture me on the rules of war.’That’s fancy talking, man.”
“That was Bush he was talking about,” Kling said.
“No, that was President James Marshall,” Willis said.
“Yeah, but that wasBush who started the Gulf War.”
“You want to know who was an evenbetter President than Harrison Ford?” Hawes said.
“Who?”
“Michael Douglas.”
“Oh,yeah.”
“He was maybe the best President we ever had. You see that movie, Steve?”
“No,” Carella said curtly.
“Have a bagel, sourpuss,” Parker said.
“The American President.That was the movie. Michael Douglas was President Andrew Shepherd.”
“You remember who his aide was?” Kling asked.
“No, who?”
“Martin Sheen! Who is nowPresident!”
“President Josiah Bartlet!”
“PresidentJedBartlet.”
“What goes around, comes around.”
“What’shis aide’s name?”
“Who cares?” Parker asked.
“He might be President one day.”
“Fredric March was a good President, too,” Byrnes suggested.
“Who’s Fredric March?” Kling asked.
“Seven Days in May.”
“Never heard of it.”
“Or Henry Fonda,” Byrnes said. “InFail-Safe.”
“That was the same movie, wasn’t it?” Brown asked.
“It onlyseemed like the same movie,” Hawes said.
“Who’s Henry Fonda?” Kling asked.
“How about Kevin Kline?” Willis asked.
“Yes, he was a very good President,” Meyer said solemnly.
“He was also this guy wholooked like the President.”
“Dave.”
“That was the name of the movie.Dave.”
“It was also the name of the lookalike. Dave Kovic.”
“Because thereal President had a stroke while fucking his secretary. I saw that movie,” Parker said. “This sexy broad.”
“Yeah,” Willis said, remembering.
“Yeah,” Brown said, nodding.
They all had another bagel.
“But you know who was thebest actor?” Meyer asked. “Who ever played the President?”
“Who?” Kling said.
“Ronald Reagan.”
“Oh yes,” Kling said.
“Yes,” Hawes agreed.
“Unquestionably,” Byrnes said.
What’s the use? Carella thought, and took a bagel from the tray.
THE CALL FROM Carella’s sister came at a little before ten that Friday morning. The surveillance equipment from the Tech Unit had already arrived. Across the room, Meyer Meyer was helping Fat Ollie Weeks tape the battery-powered recorder to Tito Gomez’s che
st.