“The first thing we do is get him dressed,” Tom Spellacy said.
It took them ten minutes to put the clothes on Mickey Gagnon. When they finally double-knotted his shoes, they propped him up against the headboard and folded his hands in his lap. He looked as if he were on the first day of a vacation.
“What the fuck were you doing here?” Tom Spellacy asked the corpse suddenly.
“Getting his ashes hauled is a good bet, I think,” Crotty said. “You figured out yet how we keep the coroner out of this?”
Tom Spellacy picked up the car keys from the bureau.
“He’s got a car around here someplace,” he said. “A black Buick, I bet. Parked on the street. We send Bingo and Lorenzo out to find it. They bring it back here, they park it out back in the alley.”
“Then what?”
Tom Spellacy stared at the body on the bed. “He’s wearing those duds, then he must’ve been taking the day off or something. What do you do, you take a day off.”
“Go to the track.”
“He’s a priest, for Chrissake, Frank.”
“Then what the fuck’s he doing here, he’s such a terrific priest?” Crotty said. “He’d’ve been better off at Santa Anita, I think.”
“Jesus, you’re a help.”
“Go to the beach then.”
“It’s raining.”
“Go shopping.”
Tom Spellacy snapped his fingers. “That May Company over on Pico.”
“The new one.”
“It’s got a parking lot a mile long.”
“We get Bingo and Lorenzo to leave him in the lot.”
“The way it’s raining, nobody’s going to pay any attention to them.”
“Somebody’s bound to find him sooner or later.”
“Coronary in the car.”
“Happens all the time,” Crotty said. “What do you tell the monsignor, is what I want to know.”
“I tell him not to get too curious how Mickey checked out, is one thing I tell him,” Tom Spellacy said. “No autopsy is another thing I tell him.”
“You’re not going to say anything, I’m not going to say anything, nobody in this joint’s going to say anything,” Crotty said. He dug at his teeth with the toothpick. “The coon’s a tomb. Which leaves Bingo.”
“I’ll take care of Bingo.”
Tom Spellacy opened the door of Room 514 and called Bingo Mclnerney inside. Bingo closed the door behind him and whistled when he saw the corpse propped up on the bed.
“Jesus, you did a hell of a job is all I got to say,” Bingo said. “I nearly shit, I saw who it was. A real pain in the ass in confession. You told him you picked your nose, he’d give you a rosary.” He began to smirk. “When my old lady was president of the Altar Society at Saint Luke’s there, it was always Father Gagnon this and Father Gagnon that. She’d crap her pants, she knew he was a tail chaser.”
“How about the boys at McGovern’s?” Tom Spellacy said.
“They’ll cream.”
“You like a transfer to 77th Street?” Tom Spellacy said.
“You got to be kidding,” Bingo said.
“Wall-to-wall nigger in 77th Street,” Crotty said.
“It’s a fucking jungle, 77th Street Division,” Bingo said. “What’d I do, deserve 77th Street?”
“You open your face about this, McGovern’s or any other place, you’ll be walking the bricks out of 77th Street,” Tom Spellacy said.
“Jesus, Tom, you can trust me,” Bingo said. He jerked his thumb toward the door. “It’s the coon you got to worry about.”
“No, we don’t,” Crotty said. “It’s you.” He smiled pleasantly. “Tom’s brother, the monsignor, he’s got a special mass he says for them cops been blown away in the 77th. They play the fucking tom-tom.”
“Jesus,” Bingo Mclnerney said.
2
Bingo Mclnerney and Lorenzo Jones found the black Buick parked across from MacArthur Park. There was an illegal parking ticket stuck under the windshield wiper. When Lorenzo Jones drove the car into the alley behind the Alvarado Arms, Crotty tore the ticket up. He and Tom Spellacy placed the body, which they had carried four flights down the back stairs of the hotel, in the middle of the front seat. The body immediately collapsed toward the passenger door. It looked like a drunk who had passed out. Crotty told Lorenzo to park the Buick in an empty section of the May Company lot and to leave the glove compartment open with the keys in the lock to make it look as if Mickey Gagnon had been searching for something when he was stricken. He was then to walk through the store and out the front door. Bingo would be parked in the black-and-white two blocks away. They were then to resume their watch and not mention the incident in their report.
“Any questions?” Crotty said.
“No,” Lorenzo Jones said.
“It’s too early in the morning and it’s raining too hard for anyone to be around,” Crotty said.
“I know,” Lorenzo Jones said. He eased the Buick out the alley.
“He thinks this is something white folks do,” Tom Spellacy said.
“I got a question,” Bingo Mclnerney said. “How come the coon drives Mickey?”
“He’s got a natural sense of rhythm, it comes to driving a Buick,” Crotty said.
“I could’ve done that,” Bingo said.
“You could end up in 77th Street, you don’t shut up,” Tom Spellacy said.
3
“Who was that you were sneaking out of here?” Brenda Samuels said.
“The mayor,” Tom Spellacy said.
Brenda poured two cups of tea and placed the kettle back on the hot plate. Her rooms smelled of cats. There was a pan of kitty litter in one corner of the sitting room and saucers of soured milk in the other three. Through the open door, he could see a rust-colored cat asleep in the unmade bed in the bedroom and a mangy Persian chewing on a curtain it had torn loose from the curtain rod. He remembered that she had always had cats. They just never smelled before.
“You always were a talkative bastard,” Brenda said. “Where’s your friend, does all the business with the Chinks?”
So she knows about Crotty’s motel, he thought. He wasn’t surprised. Brenda always liked to know what was going on. Even in a dump like this, she would be plugged into what was happening. It always helped. Especially in a dump like this. “He went back downtown.”
“He used to like dark meat, he ever tell you that?”
Tom Spellacy sipped his tea. That was something that must have slipped Crotty’s mind.
“Never took off that white suit when they were doing him. I used to watch him through the peek.”
On the cuff, no doubt. He wondered what else Crotty got from Brenda.
“Lenny Lewis hung himself,” he said.
“I heard.” She poured some cream into a spoon and let the Persian lick it. “Fuck him.”
Her hair had grayed and she had gained weight. There was a network of wrinkles under her eyes and her fingers were stained with nicotine. She had started turning out in San Diego at sixteen and she was running her own joint before she was twenty. Now she was a woman in a dirty nightgown going to fat. Except for the nicotine, she reminded him of Mary Margaret. He wondered if that had always been the attraction.
“You look like shit.”
She shrugged. “How’s the wife? Still in the crazy house?”
There it was, that fuck-you quality he had always liked.
“And the monsignor? I hear him on the radio. The Rosary Hour.’ KFIM at noon. He loves all that bullshit, I bet. The Latin. The Stations of the Cross. I bet he used to say a novena for you, every time I sucked you off.”
The matter-of-fact voice. She didn’t scare. Ever. He remembered telling her once he bet that she pissed ice water.
“You haven’t changed much,” he said.
“What’d you expect, Shirley Temple? I need you like I need another fuck.”
He said nothing. She would push again, he knew that.
“He plays a nice game of golf, your brother, Jack used to say.”
“Fuck you, Brenda.”
“You used to like to,” she said. She poured herself another cup of tea. “What’s this all about? I pay Vice good money not to roust me.”
“Murder One.”
She stifled a yawn. “Who?”
He told her about the body at 39th and Norton. The story did not seem to impress her.
“What’s that got to do with me?”
“She had a rose tattooed on her pussy. That ring any bells?”
“I don’t owe you any favors.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it.” The rust-colored cat leaped up on her lap. She stroked its neck until it began to purr. “You got a girl friend, I hear.”
“You do keep up.”
“She’s got a cunt like cashmere, I also hear.”
He flicked his hand across the table and hit her in the face. The cat scurried off her lap and hid under the faded brown couch.
“I think you get your cookies off doing that,” Brenda Samuels said quietly. There was a red welt growing on her face, but he knew she would never rub it. “I bet it gives you a boner. You got a little fellow, as I remember. I bet the only action it gets is from Five-Finger Mary.” She reached for a Camel. He noticed that her hands didn’t tremble. Being hit was a professional hazard. “You slap me around, you get a gen-u-ine hard-on, isn’t that right?”
“Something like that.” He hadn’t hit her because of what she had said about Corinne, he knew that. Corinne would know that, too. And Brenda. It was just that she was always in control. And always had been. Like all the women he had ever known. He lit a match with his thumb and held it out to her cigarette. “We need an ID on that girl.”
She drew deeply on the Camel. Two puffs and then the cigarette went into her teacup.
“I don’t know anyone with a tattoo.”
“Ask around.”
“Hooking?”
“Possibly,” he said. “You know anyone likes to cut?”
“Johnny Levene.”
“He’s in Folsom. He’s got cancer.”
“Good,” she said. “I’m glad.” He knew she meant it. If he thought one of his girls was holding out on him, Johnny, he liked to stick a heated coat hanger up her cunt, just to remind her who she was working for.
“Not a pimp. A John.”
“I’ll put the word out.”
He rose to leave. “Keep in touch.”
“Tom?”
He stopped. He knew she was going to ask again about the body on the fifth floor. She never did like loose ends.
“That guy upstairs, he’s got something to do with your brother, right?”
“How do you figure that?”
“Come on,” she said sharply. “I been running joints for twenty-five years. When four cops sneak a stiff down the back stairs of a whorehouse, you think I don’t know something funny’s going on? And you, you haven’t worked Vice since that night I was blowing you in the front seat of my car.”
She didn’t beat around the bush. “I told you. Murder One.”
“A guy gets a heart attack in the middle of a fuck isn’t Murder One. A stiff brings you down here, it’s got to have something to do with your brother. It was a bishop at least, I figure, that guy.”
There seemed to be no point in denying it. She would not believe him anyway. “A monsignor.”
She did not smile. She picked the soggy cigarette butt from the teacup and dropped it in an ashtray.
“Once a bagman, always a bagman.” She never raised her voice. “Except now you do it for your brother. He sings a swell mass, I hear. Got a voice like Buddy Clark.”
He moved toward her. She didn’t flinch.
“You ever wonder why you never got indicted?”
He stopped. So now I’m going to find out, he thought.
“He was doing too much business with your brother, Jack was. All those parochial schools he was building. It wouldn’t’ve looked good, you going on trial. You might’ve talked.” He thought, She’s really enjoying this. She’s waited a long time to say it. “He put the fix in downtown.”
So that was why Jack Amsterdam had thrown Brenda to the wolves. He needed a body. And she had kept her mouth shut. Probably because she didn’t want to end up in a dryer, he thought. No copping a plea. No pointing a finger at the chief contractor for the archdiocese. He watched the hard smile on her face. Debt canceled.
“Fuck you,” he said.
“I’ll keep in touch,” Brenda Samuels said.
4
The early-morning rain had stopped. Someone’s bound to find Mickey Gagnon soon, he thought. He wasn’t ready to call Des. Not just yet. Des, who played such a nice game of golf. According to Jack. Des, who was the reason he wasn’t in the cooler. Let Mickey wait. Fuck Des. And Brenda, too.
Once a bagman, always a bagman.
She always could get under his skin. He’d like to try her out with the rubber hose. He was very good with the rubber hose. He never hit anyone with it. At least when anybody was around. Bang it against the table in the interrogation room. And against the back of a suspect’s chair. That was usually enough. It scared the piss out of them. Sometimes more. Johnny Levene had crapped his pants. He’d like to try Brenda. Maybe Des, too.
Once a bagman, always a bagman.
Except now he was doing it for Des.
Paying off the debts of a Catholic childhood. He’d helped a lot of priests in the archdiocese out of the shit. Leon Jeanette, drunk driving, seventy miles an hour down Western Avenue, three cars sideswiped, his own totaled. Eddie Kieran, $7,700 of the Peter’s Pence Collection at Holy Trinity riding on a pair of treys. A word here, a word there. Charges dropped, case dismissed.
It was the only coin he had to offer.
Once a bagman, always a bagman.
He stopped on Broadway for a shine. Broadway Bates slapped polish on his shoes. Broadway Bates. 36 YEARS SAME LOCATION, BEST SHINE WEST OF CHICAGO. Broadway Bates had a tip.
“I hear she was a whore, Tom.” He pronounced it whooor.
Brenda’s words reverberated in Tom Spellacy’s ear. “A cunt like cashmere, I hear,” he said.
“That’s what I hear, too.”
The vendors on Broadway always had tips. The Wig Man. The Flower Man. The Tie Man. There were cops in the department whose only sources were the sidewalk vendors on Broadway. You’re a sidewalk vendor, you keep your eyes open, Ben Bass liked to say. A poodle pissed on a tree in Beverly Hills and Ben Bass was out checking The Wig Man, The Flower Man, The Tie Man. Broadway Bates knew a guy with a poodle, had a pair of Scotch-grain Florsheims needed a shine, down at the heels, no cuffs on the pants. From the cuffs down, Broadway Bates never made a mistake.
“Two weeks ago, Tom,” Broadway Bates said. He never took his eyes off the shoes. It occurred to Tom Spellacy that although Broadway Bates had been giving him a free shine for years, he probably could not pick him out of a lineup. All he ever saw was the top of his head. “A dame with a scuff mark on a pair of navy blue patent-leather pumps. Imitation-gold buckles, sharkskin heel guards. Sitting in the third chair. She wasn’t wearing no pants. It was like cashmere, I swear to God, no shit.”
Tom Spellacy buried his face in the Express. The headline on Howard Terkel’s story said, POLICE SEEK WEREWOLF SLAYER, and the subhead, in smaller type, MYSTERY CLERGYMAN CLEARED.
He swore.
“She’s the one, Tom,” Broadway Bates whispered. For the first time he noticed there was a knob on the back of Broadway Bates’s head.
He read.
“The modern counterpart of a medieval torture chamber,” Howard Terkel had written, “in which a slim, unidentified Mystery Beauty writhed for hours before her brutal murder by a maniacal ‘werewolf killer, was still being sought by homicide detectives today.
“An eminent local clergyman has definitely been ‘eliminated’ as a suspect, a police source also indicated.”
Tom Spellacy swore again.
Mystery Beauty. For a sudden, irrational moment, he thought it was all her fault. Brenda. Jack. Des. Once a bagman, always a bagman. A cunt like cashmere. Mickey Gagnon.
Fuck them all.
He dialed Des when he got to headquarters. The nun on the chancery switchboard had a voice like Sister Clarita in the fifth grade at Saint Anatole’s. (“Fighting in the toilet again, Thomas Spellacy. It’s the rubber hose for you.”) She asked who was calling.
“Homicide,” he said, remembering Sister Clarita.
“I beg your pardon.”
“LAPD.”
“For what purpose do you wish to speak to the monsignor?”
“I got a fistful of tickets to the Policemen’s Ball I want to get rid of.”
“I’m sure Monsignor Spellacy doesn’t want to bother himself with that. I’ll connect you with Father Barry.”
“Blow it out your ass, will you, Sister. Just get me Monsignor Spellacy.”
Des picked up the phone a moment later.
“What’d you say to Sister Margaret, got her so upset?” Des said.
“Basically I told her to blow it out her ass,” Tom said.
“Basically that’d do it,” Des said. “She doesn’t hear that much from the Mother Superior, I bet.”
“You talk to her next, you tell her I hope all her sons are Jesuits.”
He could hear Des breathing on the other end of the telephone. “I’ve been reading about you in the newspapers,” he said finally.
“They miss all the good stuff, the newspapers. All the solid citizens calling in with their clues. There was this guy yesterday, Sister Margaret might like to meet him, I think. He said he was Jay Cee’s younger brother Jim.”
“The Bible doesn’t mention him that I know of.”
“That’s what I told him was my impression. He had a birth certificate, he said, Jim. March 14, 29 B.C. And that wasn’t good enough for me, Jim said, I could go take a flying fuck, you’ll excuse the expression, Monsignor.”
“Excused,” Des said. “I read something about a Mystery Clergyman.”
“You think it was one of yours?”
True Confessions Page 11