“That’s it,” Crosetti said. “You’re blaming me for something I would have done but it got done before I could do it. Capish?”
Mitch and Hurley didn’t let it go at that. Crosetti glanced from one to the other for reaction, but they gamed him, just sat there silent and blank. Which pulled the story out of Crosetti again.
He repeated it in part or entirely three times more. Each time he omitted something or added another detail, but, basically, he stuck to the same version and each time both Mitch and Hurley found the gimmie that never happened more acceptable.
“Sure, Sal, but let me ask, personally, in your professional opinion, who do you think did the Kalali thing?”
“I got no fucking idea. Honest. Nobody has put even initials in my ear. I do know the street wants the goods bad. I know that for sure because of the way I’ve been pressed. This past weekend I got pressed hard by certain people and they got pissed at me, but what the fuck, I can’t come up with goods I ain’t got.”
All the while Crosetti kept time and jabbed for emphasis with his unlighted cigar. As though he was in front of the New York Philharmonic.
“Anyway,” he went on, “why is everybody making such a big fucking deal out of these particular goods? They show up, they show up. They don’t, they don’t. It ain’t like there’s never going to be more.”
Mitch watched Crosetti go.
He felt somewhat drained. That made him realize to what measure he’d been counting on the recovery, actually the six hundred thousand. Unconsciously maybe but nonetheless counting. Having big money of his own wasn’t really all that important, he fibbed to himself.
A resigned sigh. “Well,” he said, “back to the starting blocks.”
“Yeah, false start,” Hurley said.
They stood up to leave.
“By the way,” Hurley said, “I forgot to mention, I have to go out of town for a few days.”
“When?”
“Tomorrow morning. I’m going to Maryland.”
“To look over some properties, I suppose,” Mitch said wryly.
“Don’t I wish. I have to testify on a case in Baltimore. I gave a deposition but they want me on the stand.”
“How long will you be gone?”
“I’ll be back Thursday. Friday, the latest. Anything turns up give me a call at the Chesapeake Motel.”
Chapter 21
Lois Mae Dayton, more frequently known as Peaches, had dire needs again.
Like a place to go back to. She had been sharing a fourth-floor, one-and-a-half-room walk-up on Cebra Avenue in the Stapleton section of Staten Island. With a girl about her own age named Debbie something. During the past week, while Peaches was hanging out with Floyd and others in Brooklyn, Debbie had taken off, and that same day the walk-up had been rented to someone else.
Debbie had taken everything with her. Along with her own stuff every stitch and shoe and possession of Peaches.
Considering what little Peaches was left with—the dress she had on and whatever happened to be in her shoulder bag—she took the loss fairly well. She’d asked for it, she believed, as she had more or less times before. It was her fault for having trusted a size-seven roommate. No use wasting anger on Debbie. She was gone to somewhere.
Peaches was now on the Staten Island Ferry, returning to Manhattan. Out on the upper deck on the portside seated on one of the fixed benches. The ferry trip was a time-out. The next phase of her life and having to cope with it wouldn’t begin until the ferry pulled in. In the meantime the vessel was growling and shuddering under her and she didn’t have sunglasses to offset the late morning glare on the water.
She closed her eyes.
To sort of celebrate the beginning that lay ahead, she restricted her thoughts to things she would like. Foremost, a place of her own. Entirely hers, no roommate or guy staying over longer than a night or two and then moving in. A place on the Upper West Side not far from the park, or, even better, a loft in the TriBeCa area. She’d furnish it with truly new furniture, not a single broken thing retrieved from the street or lugged out of some second-, third-, fourth-hand store.
It wasn’t unthinkable that she’d have a car. Sure, a convertible she’d go like hell and look outstanding in. A driver’s license with her photo on it, a genuine Social Security number rather than just nine numbers she made up. A checking account? A credit card? There’d be lots of dinners out. She’d know all the best eating places.
As for clothes, she might go DKNY At the very least Calvin. The shoes she’d have!
She opened her eyes. Yawned. Her teeth needed brushing. The ferry still had quite a ways to go. The water didn’t look like anything she’d care to swim in. Once she’d almost learned to swim.
She got up and went inside to the restroom. It smelled like what it was mainly for. She pulled off her panties and threw them into the trash basket. Tore open the packet of three she’d bought for a dollar off an outside table of a store on Orchard Street that morning. Put a fresh pair on and felt that much improved.
Her makeup needed repair.
She brushed her hair, and used her fingers to give it the desirable muss.
She dug into the very bottom of her bag for the loose change she’d thrown in at various times. Made sure she got every penny. Three dollars forty-three cents. She put the change into her small, inside purse, which then contained altogether sixteen dollars and some.
Also in that inside purse were the earrings.
She decided to put them on.
The light in that enclosed space was yellow and dim. It cost the diamonds nearly all their glitter. The rubies looked more black than red.
Peaches had had a falling out with Floyd over the earrings. After the robbery she wouldn’t take them off, contended they were hers, her part of the swag.
That wasn’t how Floyd saw it. He tried to sweet-talk and fondle them off her. Offered her a hundred for them. Finally he lost patience and set about to rip them off. They were made with locking French backs and held fast to her ears.
She managed to struggle free of Floyd, made a dash down to the street. He wasn’t about to chase after her and cause a public fuss. Little kicking, honky ass bitch with bleeding earlobes: swag earrings with much more serious blood on them.
The ferry was bumping pilings, lining up with its slip.
Peaches returned the earrings to her inside purse and hurried out to the unloading ramp to be among the first off. Next was the subway. She believed it a significant positive sign that she was exactly on time to catch the Lexington Avenue express, and, after long stretches of unsteady, noisy speed and seven screeching stops, she came up out of the ground at 59th Street.
There were numerous jewelry stores in the area, including Tiffany and Winston and Van Cleef & Arpels. She decided against those imposing establishments, settled on a small shop on 60th because it felt comfortable to her.
She went in with one of the earrings in her fist and what she believed was her most winning expression. She made it immediately understood that she was a seller not a buyer.
The jeweler was an ordinary-looking man named Eli Phelps. He had pale, pampered hands. He examined the earring with a ten-power loupe and concealed his interest.
“Where’s the other?” he asked.
“I lost it.”
“How unfortunate.”
“One ought to be worth something.”
“Not nearly as much as a pair.”
“So, what’s one worth?”
Phelps counted the diamonds and rubies, realized their superb quality, estimated their size within a point or so. At the same time he took stock of Peaches, gauged her knowledge and concluded that she was too young to know the true value.
“Five thousand,” he told her.
“Is that all?” Peaches scrinched her face. Actually, five thousand was more than she’d expected.
“I might be able to do six,” Phelps conceded, “but that would be cutting it painfully close. Painfully,” he repeated becau
se he enjoyed using the word for such circumstances.
Peaches pretended to rummage around in her bag. She did a gasp of surprise. “What do you know, I found it.” She brought out the other earring, placed it next to its match on the black velour square on the counter. “Now how much?” she asked straight at Phelps.
He was both impressed and rubbed the wrong way by her artifice. No matter, he was going to make out. “Twenty thousand,” he replied.
Peaches was sure her eyes were dancing. See how good fate can be if you just slap it on the ass, she thought. “Cash,” she specified.
“I’m afraid that’s impossible.”
“Why?”
“It just is, impossible.”
“I won’t take a check,” Peaches stated unequivocally. At least two out of every five checks she’d ever accepted had been the no account or insufficient kind. She wasn’t about to get stiffed this time.
“Okay,” Phelps said, “here’s what you do. Take the earrings to this person.” He wrote the name and address on the reverse side of one of his business cards. “I’ll phone him and tell him to expect you. He’ll pay you cash.”
“Twenty thousand.”
“Without a quibble. I guarantee it.”
It was what Phelps had in mind all along. The way he preferred to handle such matters, not lay out any money, just refer. In return he’d get a ten percent cut of the difference between the twenty thousand this girl would be paid and the hundred thousand or so the earrings would bring at auction or wholesale.
Peaches’ walk to twenty thousand down Fifth Avenue seemed to take hardly any time. She was in a state of extreme personalization. Just about everything in sight, especially handbags, shoes, compact disc players and such, had a new attainable significance for her.
Twenty thousand.
Two hundred hundreds. One thousand twenties.
Her imagination exaggerated what a stack it would be. A far cry from the paltry amount she’d earned from nearly bare-ass dancing. Those dollar bills and rare fives slipped in under the elastic of her G-string by male fingers in appreciation of the convincing way she squirmed and snapped her crotch and performed make-believe fucks with an upright pole.
When she reached 47th Peaches turned right and entered the first major building, designated number 1. The name that had been given to her by Phelps was on the directory in the lobby. And on the sixth floor she also found it on one of the doors.
She went in.
There was Andrew Laughton.
At the desk in the outer office going over invoices. It took a moment for his expectation to adjust to the sight of Peaches. Eli Phelps had said a young lady would be along momentarily wanting to sell some fine earrings that she didn’t understand. Meaning she had no idea of their value.
Young lady.
Not an apt description of this person in a flimsy halter dress of pink that barely reached down to her crotch, this gangly-limbed, not yet entirely developed creature whose eyes were way overexaggerated by makeup, whose lower lip appeared swollen and incapable of meeting her upper, a mouth that looked ready to suck on whatever might be offered.
Andrew stood and introduced himself.
Peaches said she was Miranda Turner, a name she’d used before. She gave Phelps’ business card to Andrew. “This guy told me you’d give me cash for my earrings.”
Andrew offered her a chair.
As she sat, the crotch of her white panties was exposed and remained in sight. She got the earrings from her inner purse, handed them to Andrew.
He took a quick look at them. “They’re quite lovely,” he said. “And they’ll be ever more so once they’ve been cleaned. May I do that for you?”
“Just give me the money and you can do whatever the fuck you want with them later.”
“How much are you hoping to get?”
Peaches thought that had been settled. She didn’t want to go through it again. She did a persevering sigh. “Twenty thousand,” she said firmly.
The amount seemed incongruous coming from that mouth, Andrew thought. “They certainly appear to be worth that much,” he said, “but I’ll need to take a closer look.”
He placed the earrings on the desk and went into the inner office, ostensibly to get a loupe. Doris was there. He quickly looked through the photographs of the Kalali swag that Mitch had left with him the previous Friday. His experienced eyes had almost immediately recognized the earrings and he was now checking to be certain. And, yes, there, without question, was the photo of them. Was it possible the earrings the girl had were coincidentally the same design? Exactly? No they had too much quality for that to be the case: one-of-a-kind quality.
Andrew whispered swift instructions to Doris. She accompanied him to the outer office. Peaches accepted a Pepsi and Doris complimented her on her fingernails, which had kitten faces enameled on them. “They were nicer,” Peaches said, “but now some are chipping off. I had them done by a Korean woman two weeks ago. She also does great palm trees and flags.”
Andrew, meanwhile, was examining the earrings under ten-times magnification, noticing the insurance registry code number scratched on the backs near the base of the posts, so tiny it was hardly visible. “How much?” he asked again.
“Twenty thousand,” Peaches replied again.
“And you want cash you say?”
Will he ever get it? Peaches thought. She nodded.
“At the moment,” Andrew told her, “I don’t have that much in the safe …”
“Shit,” from Peaches with a lot of sh.
“… but Doris will go to the bank for it.”
Peaches brightened. “Where’s the bank?”
“I won’t be ten minutes,” Doris assured and hurried out.
She was true to her word. She returned in eight.
Mitch was with her.
Peaches took a quick look at him and then tried to not look at him. Her instinct told her he could be a problem: he could be a cop. Or perhaps he was only a guy who naturally had that don’t-fuck-with-me look. She also noticed Doris had come back empty-handed. “Hey, how about my money?” she demanded.
Andrew introduced Mitch as Investigator Laughton. Mitch went right at it. “Where did you get these earrings?”
“I found them,” Peaches said.
“Where?”
“In a taxi. I got in and there they were. Lucky for me, huh?”
Mitch pretended he was believing her, then shifted. “Who gave them to you?”
“I told you I found them in a taxi.”
“I know, but someone gave them to you.”
“Actually, yeah, someone.”
“Who?”
“My aunt. She left them to me when she died.”
“On her deathbed.”
“How did you know?”
“She took them off and tossed them to you.”
“Something like that.”
Mitch did an amused laugh. “Where else did you get them?”
Peaches thought for a while before saying smugly: “I blew a guy for them.” She enjoyed that explanation because there was a degree of truth to it.
“Generous guy.”
“Great blow job.” Peaches grinned.
“Who was the guy?”
The truth again. She saw no harm in it. “A guy named Floyd.”
“Floyd what?”
“A lot of people don’t have last names anymore.”
“Is he from around here?”
“Brooklyn.” Once more she told herself no harm. There had to be ten thousand Floyds in Brooklyn. What fun it was telling truths this cop was taking to be lies.
Mitch had noticed the boots Peaches was wearing, their pointed steel-capped toes. He’d also guessed her weight to be around a hundred five or ten. He mentally placed her in the footprints he’d seen on the rear grounds of the Kalali house. She fit. She was the lightweight swift.
“You’re full of stories,” he told her.
“Is that a nice way of saying I’m ful
l of shit?”
“Yeah, now let me tell one. Saturday night, week before last, around midnight, you went with some guys out to Far Hills, New Jersey, to do a robbery. You got left off on the road that runs along the rear grounds of the house. You climbed over the wall and made for the house. Big, white contemporary house. Remember it?”
Don’t say anything, Peaches told herself.
Mitch kept on. “The owners of the house had just gotten home from dinner. A man and his wife. They were the only ones at home. They were held at gunpoint while the jewelry was gathered up. The wife was cooperative. The husband wasn’t. He got out of line and was killed. The wife panicked and was also shot.” Mitch paused. He could almost see his words sinking in. “How am I doing?”
Peaches tried to conceal her astonishment. This fucker knew everything, she thought. It was as though he’d been there when it happened.
She glanced at the way out. Should she try to make a run for it? She could outrun these people. She looked at Mitch and knew she’d never make it.
Keep on lying, her instincts advised.
She glanced at the earrings on the desk. Fucking earrings. She wished now she’d never seen them, that she’d let Floyd have them. She wished now that the only problem she had was having only sixteen dollars to her real name and no place to live.
Keep on lying, her instincts insisted.
She reached down into that place in her where her lies seemed to originate. She chose one but didn’t believe it would get her out of this. She was jammed up, seriously jammed this time. Not like before. Those minor offenses such as shoplifting when she was juvenile. If she was still juvenile she’d tell this cop to kiss it.
What to do?
Her instincts told her to twist the truth.
She did a lengthy frown and bit her lower lip crookedly before giving in with a smaller, fragile voice. “It was supposed to be just a joy ride,” she said. “Floyd talked me into going along. I had no idea they were out to rob a house.”
Andy went into his inner office and phoned the police.
By the time they arrived Mitch had drawn it out of Peaches, the identity of Floyd. Mitch knew that particular Floyd, knew the crew. What’s more he knew the fence that crew belonged to.
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