Nick's Trip

by George Pelecanos

  I stopped walking and put my hand on his arm. “I need your help, Mr. DiGeordano.”

  He looked me in the eyes, shrugged, and made a salutatory motion with his hand. “Anything.”

  We walked on. A low, thick cloud passed beneath the sun. Its slow shadow crossed the channel in our direction. “Do you remember a murder last year, a young white man in his apartment on Sixteenth Street, a reporter for a small newspaper in town?”

  DiGeordano withdrew a lozenge from his overcoat pocket, unwrapped it, and popped the lozenge into his mouth. He clucked his tongue, staring ahead. “Yes, I remember it. It was in the papers, every day. Then nothing.”

  “That young man was a friend of mine,” I said.

  “Go on.”

  “He was researching a story on a pizza place called the Olde World and a man named Bonanno at the time that he was killed. I think the people that run the Olde World have an arson business and gambling operation as well, and I think my friend was murdered because he got too close.”

  “Bonanno’s a filthy pig,” DiGeordano said.

  “You know him?”

  “Of course.”

  I stopped and struck a match, cupping one hand around it, lighting another cigarette. Then I blew out the first sulfurous hit and ran a hand through my tangled, uncombed hair. DiGeordano leaned his back against the rail and looked at my unshaven face. “You’re deep into this,” he said, “aren’t you?”

  I took a fresh drag off the smoke. “Bonanno’s a fat man, bushy gray sideburns, right?”—DiGeordano nodded—“and there’s two more with him, a guy named Frank and a tall man with bad skin. Who else?”

  “No one else,” he said tiredly. “Bonanno and Frank are small-time hoods out of Jersey. The tall man goes by the name of Solanis. Contract mechanic, from Miami. They say he killed a cop and drifted north. Caught some buckshot in the face while he was drifting. Bad business, that—killing cops, and outsiders—it isn’t done. Very sloppy. They’re not going to last.”

  “What are they into? Organized gambling?”

  DiGeordano chuckled. “Not too organized, from what I hear. As far as bookmaking goes, they don’t know shit from apple butter. They still work from chits, for Christ’s sake, and notebooks.”

  “So what’s their game? Arson?”

  “Their game?”

  “They moved their shops near a string of pizza parlors called the Pie Shack, and every one of the Pie Shacks got burned out. That can’t be a coincidence.”

  “It’s not,” he said. “But arson’s not their source of income. Neither is gambling.”

  “What is, then?”

  DiGeordano said, “Pizza.”

  I dragged off my cigarette and looked out into the water. The cloud had passed, leaving the channel shiny and brilliant in the noon sun. “Tell me about it.”

  “It’s simple,” he said. “The pizza business is very profitable. Bonanno moved into proven, established neighborhoods and burned out the competition. Solanis was there to make sure there weren’t any belches. The guy who owned the Pie Shack simply left town, and felt lucky to leave alive. Bonanno puts a couple hundred thousand in nontaxable income in his pocket every year. The gambling is their kick, and the business end of it just covers their losses. No drugs, prostitution, nothing like that—just a bunch of hoods, selling pizzas.”

  “What about the law, the fire people?”

  DiGeordano shrugged. “Bought.”

  I flipped the remainder of my cigarette out into the channel. “A cop by the name of Goloria, and his partner, a woman named Wallace, they paid me a visit a while back.”

  “Goloria,” DiGeordano said.

  “That’s right. Things got rough—he said it was about April Goodrich, but something wasn’t right. Is Goloria connected to your son Joey?”

  “No. My ties with the law in this town go farther back, and higher than that. We don’t have to get down in the shit with cops like him. He tried to approach us, once. I sent him on his way.”

  “He’s been talking to people I know about the young reporter’s murder.”

  “That’s not a surprise—I would think he’d be a little nervous that you’re looking into it.”

  “Why’s that?”

  DiGeordano ran his fingers along the brim of his hat. “Goloria’s in with Bonanno.”

  I leaned on the railing and looked down into the gray channel. A dead catfish floated on the surface, near a large sheet of packaging paper. I felt feverish and dizzy in the cold wind, and I unfastened the top buttons of my overcoat as I turned to DiGeordano. “Who killed the reporter?” I said.

  “You should have talked to me from the beginning,” he said. “There’s still very little going on in this town that gets by me. I know you disapprove of me, and my son. I can only tell you that in all my years, I never shed any innocent blood, in anything I did. In fact, there was very little violence at all. That’s why I can’t stomach what’s happened to this city. People like Bonanno—they’re vampires, but fragile as dust. Their own ignorance exterminates them. Do you understand?”

  “Who killed the reporter?” I said again. The wind whistled through our silence, and water slapped the concrete.

  “The knife job,” DiGeordano said. “That’s the signature of Solanis.”

  “That’s what I needed to know.”

  “Before you act on this,” he said, “you’d better think things over.”

  “I’m fine,” I said. The cold wind stung my face.

  DiGeordano studied me. “There’s something else?”

  I nodded. “There’s one more piece of business.”

  “You’re talking about my son’s problem, with April Goodrich.” DiGeordano waved his hand slowly in front of his face. “Like I said, nothing gets by me. You found the girl, and she’s dead. Isn’t that right?”

  “Yes. But there’s more to it.”

  “Such as?”

  “Have Caruso pull the Caddy next to my Dart,” I said, pushing away from the rail. “I’ve got something to show you.”

  I WORKED EARLY SHIFT at the Spot for the next four days. At the end of each shift I changed clothes, drove out to Gallatin in Northeast, and parked my car in front of the row of brick colonials. Then I walked into the woods and waited for them to arrive at the Sears bungalow, and on each of the four nights, they showed with the pillowcases filled with gambling chits, at roughly the same time. Occasionally there were visitors, interchangeable ruddy-faced men in dark clothing who drove through the woods in Buick Electras and Pontiac Bonnevilles and stayed for a few quick, stiff drinks. But always at the end of the night there were the three of them—Bonanno, Frank, and Solanis.

  ON THE FOURTH NIGHT, a Wednesday, I returned to my apartment, poured a drink, phoned Dan Boyle, and told him everything I knew.

  ON THURSDAY AFTERNOON BOYLE walked into the Spot with a gym bag in his hand and took a seat at the bar. He put the bag at his feet, ordered a draught, and asked for it in an icy mug.

  “What’s in the bag, Boyle?” I said as I wiped down the bar.

  “You’ll find out soon enough.” Boyle put a Marlboro to his lips and pointed a thick finger past my shoulder. “This beer’s gettin’ lonesome,” he said. “How ’bout a hit of that Jack?”

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  BOYLE DRANK SLOWLY AND silently through happy hour. Buddy, Bubba, and Richard sat at the far end of the bar and drained a pitcher, their shoulders touching. Melvin Jeffers sang ballads softly through two gin martinis before walking out with a cheerful wave, and Happy knocked back several Manhattans as he dented a deck of Chesterfields. Ramon and Darnell stood in the kitchen, Ramon demonstrating his proficiency with a switchblade knife. I leaned against the call rack, my arms folded across my chest, moving occasionally to empty an ashtray or fill a pitcher. John Hiatt’s Bring the Family played through the house speakers.

  By eight o’clock, Buddy, Bubba, and Richard were gone. Buddy had sneered on his way out, doing his Tasmanian-devil-with-stretch-marks walk, and Bubba had
followed, scratching his head. Happy had fallen asleep at the bar, a half-inch of hot Chesterfield wedged between his yellowed fingers. I phoned him a cab and walked him outside, and put the cab on his weekly tab.

  When I returned, Boyle had gone to the head. I retrieved two bottles of Bud from the cooler and buried them in the ice chest. Darnell was in the kitchen placing dishes in the soak sink, his back to Ramon. Ramon touched his knife to Darnell’s back and pushed on the blade. Darnell turned with a balled fist. Ramon laughed and pursed his lips in a kiss, but stepped back. I poked my head in and asked them to keep an eye on the bar while I shot down to the basement for some beer.

  The Spot’s dirt-floored basement was long and dusty and lit by a single naked bulb. I went down a narrow set of wooden stairs and walked through powdered poison. Rat tracks were etched in the powder, and the smell of death hovered in the room like a heat. I set up two cases of Bud and a case of Heineken on top of that and got under all of them, lifting with my knees. By the time I reached the top of the stairs and reentered the bar, a line of sweat had formed across my forehead.

  Boyle was back on his stool, his hand around a mug of fresh draught. A Marlboro burned in the ashtray, next to the draught. I set the beer at the foot of the cooler and locked the front door.

  I returned to the cooler and pulled out all the cold Buds and Heinekens. Then I ripped open the cardboard cases and stocked the warm beer on the bottom of the cooler, placing the cold beer back on top. I slid the cooler lid to the left, closing it. Boyle asked for another shot of Jack. I poured it, replaced the bottle on the shelf, walked back down to the deck, and slipped in Winter Hours’ EP, Wait till the Morning. The rumble of “Hyacinth Girl” came forward.

  On the walk back toward Boyle I dimmed the rheostat and took the lights down in the bar. I pulled a Bud out of the ice by its neck and popped the cap. I set it on the bar next to a heavy shot glass and poured Grand-Dad. Boyle raised his glass and tapped it against mine.

  “Here’s to you, Boyle.”

  “And to you.”

  I closed my eyes and felt the bourbon numb my lips and gums and the back of my throat. I waited for the warmth to fill my chest and followed it then with a deep pull of beer. The beer was cold and good, and a chip of ice slid down the neck and touched my hand as I drank. I placed the bottle back on the bar and bent down over the three sinks and began to wash the last of the night’s glasses.

  Boyle said, “You ready to talk?”

  I looked into the foamy wash sink as I plunged a collins glass over a black-bristled brush. “Go ahead.”

  Boyle lit a cigarette and dropped the match into the ashtray. A wisp of smoke climbed off the match. “What you told me last night,” he said. “It was an awful lot to swallow. So I did some checking today, called in some favors, ran plates—the whole shooting match.”

  “And?”

  “Goloria was on the William Henry case from day one. He collected the evidence from the newspaper where Henry worked, and he buried it, and he probably bought or threatened a phony witness to testify to that ‘light-skinned man in a blue shirt’ crap. The Pie Shack arsons are all listed as electrical fires. Somebody got bought there too.”

  “What about Wallace. She in on it?”

  “I don’t think so. Goloria’s her hero, and they’re fuckin’ the hell out of each other—that’s no secret—but aside from her being a strange bird on the edge, that’s as far as it goes. Believe it or not, I think she’s an honest cop. She just happens to be in love with a disease.”

  I finished grouping the clean glasses on the ridged drain area of the sink. Then I hung them upside down by their stems in the glass rack above the bar. I watched Boyle as I worked. He sipped his mash, and as he lifted his glass to his lips the lapels of his Harris tweed jacket spread apart. The stock of his Colt Python angled out from the shoulder holster lashed to his chest. A second holster hung empty below the opposite arm.

  “Anything on Bonanno?”

  Boyle put his glass down on the bar and switched his hand to the beer mug’s handle. “The plate numbers you gave me checked out. Both Lincolns are registered to the Olde World. Bonanno’s down as the owner. No criminal record on Bonanno locally, or on Frank Martin.”

  “And Solanis?”

  “He’s what you think he is. I called a DEA buddy of mine, on a hunch. Solanis was an enforcer in the Miami drug trade, and he’s on the Fed’s hot list. Took out an undercover cop.” Boyle’s skittish blues eyes settled on mine. “Knife job.”

  I shook a cigarette out of Boyle’s pack. Boyle produced a Zippo from his jacket pocket and thumbed open its lid. I leaned toward the flame, hit it, and took in a drag that burned deeply into my chest. My smoke found his and drifted up through the misty cones of light that opened out from the lamps above.

  “You tell your DEA buddy that Solanis was in town?”

  “No.”

  “How about the Metro cops?” Boyle shook his head and gave me a twisted smile. “Why not?” I said.

  Boyle said, “You called me. Thought you might have something else in mind.”

  I turned to the left and saw Darnell and Ramon, their heads framed in the reach-through, looking at Boyle. Ramon stepped away, and I watched him hand Darnell his closed knife, passing it palm to palm. Darnell slid the knife into his back pocket.

  Ramon walked out of the kitchen, his coat in his hand. He nodded to me with his chin and walked to the front door. I let him out, locked the door behind him, and returned to the bar. I pointed to Boyle’s glass.

  “You ready?”

  “Yeah.”

  I topped him off, then had a pull of Bud. “Island of Jewels” ’s clean guitar filled the room. Boyle ran a hand through his short dirty blond hair.

  “What you got in mind, Boyle?”

  Boyle smiled. “What you got in mind?”

  “I’m not sure.” I looked at him carefully. “You said you’d help, and now I need it. I think you’re honest, and I think you’ve got a cast-iron set of nuts. And I think you’re a little bit crazy, Boyle.”

  “Sure I am,” he said. “But how crazy are you?”

  “I’m here,” I said, “and I’m listening.”

  Darnell shut the kitchen light down and stepped out into the room. His kufi was tilted crookedly on his head, and he had folded his brown overcoat over his arm. He placed the overcoat on a stool and leaned his mantis arms on the service bar.

  Boyle’s eyes shifted to Darnell, then to me. “Just you and me on this.”

  “I want him to stay,” I said.

  “He’s a con,” Boyle said.

  Darnell said, “You got a problem with that, redneck?”

  “Do you?” I said.

  Boyle smiled as he looked Darnell over. “He’s all right, you know it? I like this guy.”

  I sipped bourbon and placed the shot glass on the bar. “Then let’s get to it.”

  “Okay,” Boyle said. “Here it is. I can turn all this information over to the proper channels, and maybe something will shake out. Maybe they’ll bust Bonanno on a tax rap or even the arsons. Maybe Solanis will go down on the murder charge, but that’s a long shot too—you can believe the knife he used is long gone. And without that security guard, maybe Goloria will go up on charges, and maybe he’ll walk. A shitload of maybes.”

  “You saying that’s one way of doing it?”

  “That’s the straight way.”

  “What’s the other way?”

  “It depends on what you want, Nick.”

  I pulled another beer from the ice, uncapped the neck, and glanced into the amber bottle. “I figure Solanis is going to burn, sooner or later. But there’s something wrong when outsiders can come into this town and get rid of an innocent man, and there’s sure as hell something wrong when one rotten cop helps them do it.” I looked straight into Boyle. “You know what I want.”

  “I figured that,” Boyle said, leaning forward. “So I set things up. I called Goloria this afternoon. I told him we wanted to mee
t.”

  Drops of water fell from the glasses suspended in the rack above, darkening the mahogany of the bar. I finished the rest of my bourbon and dragged on my cigarette. Darnell pushed his hat back on his head. “What’d you tell him, Boyle?” I said. “Exactly.”

  “That you knew about the arsons, and the murder. That you told me you knew. And that you wanted to see them and talk things over.”

  “When?”

  “I didn’t say. Goloria got all quiet when I laid it out for him, didn’t want to talk about it on the phone. But here’s a bet—that crooked bastard will be at that house in the woods tonight to discuss it, and so will Bonanno. And the others.”

  I tilted the beer bottle to my lips, drank deeply, and wiped the backwash from my chin. A lull came in the tape, and the Spot grew quiet. I looked at Boyle and Darnell, and I wondered how it had happened that I had ended up with them, wondered what had brought us together like thieves in the night, in a shitty little bar in the southeast part of town. The thought of Tommy Crane crossed my mind, and how close I had come. But that thought passed. I felt my buzz swell, and I smiled, knowing then that it was done.

  “What’s the plan, Boyle?”

  Boyle butted his Marlboro. “You and me walk right into that house, start a fire under their asses, and make the arrest. From what you tell me, there’s enough there for a bookmaking charge straight away. But I think we got a shot at some confessions too. Once we get into it, let it develop.”