by John Lutz
Good clean work, she thought, like she’d promised her mother back in Idaho.
From the potato state or not, Hettie had a kind of wicked sexiness about her. She was five-ten and slender but curvaceous, and had those much sought and envied finely chiseled features with high cheekbones, bright dark eyes, and a full-lipped wide mouth that easily slipped into an arc of disdain even when she was thinking nice thoughts. She knew that men read all sorts of things into her, most of them carnal. That was fine. It meant she could play almost any role that came her way, from Gidget to black widow killer. Trouble was, not enough roles were coming her way.
So here she sat sipping a Cosmopolitan, having just come from an acting lesson, when she should be standing on a Broadway stage.
A guy down the bar gave her the look. Average height and weight, maybe well built inside the expensive blue suit. Wearing a white shirt and red and black tie with the knot slightly loosened as a concession to the heat outside. He was handsome enough to be an actor, with his thick black hair and symmetrical features. And just sitting there, he had a way about him. The kind of guy who seemed intelligent, viewed life with cynical humor, and took no shit. The kind of guy looking for a one-night romp but maybe more.
Hettie shifted on her bar stool and crossed her legs so her skirt hiked up another inch or so, putting on a leg show while sipping her Cosmo and studiously ignoring the guy.
He caught her eye in the back bar mirror and somehow gave her a smile without rearranging his features. Neat trick. Movie close-up stuff. He knew how to underplay, so maybe he was an actor.
She watched him in the mirror as he slid down off his stool and moved toward her with a casual grace, idly spinning empty bar stools as he advanced. He got up smoothly onto the stool next to her. It was almost as if they’d been playing some kind of game with the stools and now it was his turn on that stool.
That was when Hettie pretended to first notice him, but she held her silence. Whoever spoke first would be initiating the pickup, if that’s where this was going.
“What are you doing here?” he asked, as if he knew her and was mildly surprised to have come across her tonight.
“Drinking.”
He glanced at an oversized gold watch peeking from beneath his white shirt cuff. “You belong a few blocks downtown,” he said, “acting, singing, or dancing on stage.”
Amazing! Is he a mind reader?
She gave him a smile, trying to keep it low key as he had in the mirror. “Nobody’s where they’re supposed to be.”
“Charles Manson.”
“No,” she said, “he should be in hell.”
“Your point.” He’d brought his drink with him. Looked like scotch rocks. He took a sip. “Really, if you aren’t an actress, you should be.”
“You say that to all the women you try to pick up?”
“Pretty much so.”
She laughed. Couldn’t help the way it just bubbled out of her. There was something about this guy. The word disarming came to mind.
He cocked his head to the side as if to examine her more closely to satisfy his curiosity. “But with you it’s the truth, right? You really are an actress.”
“Well, yeah.” Like half the women in this place. “But I’m between roles right now. Except for a TV commercial shoot coming up. I’m gonna be in a bathtub full of detergent packages and bottles.”
He grinned. “I can visualize that.” Another sip of scotch, though now she noticed it smelled like bourbon. Another smile. Handsome guy. “Then you actually are in show business,” he said.
“Sure am.” The Cosmo was making her a little lightheaded. Overconfident. And in this kind of game it was okay to exaggerate a bit. She decided to let herself go a little and find out where it might lead. “I’ve done quite a lot of TV work.”
“Really? I’m impressed.”
“You don’t seem that impressed.”
“What’s your name?” he asked. “Let’s see if I’ve heard of you.”
“Hettie Davis.”
He pretended to think. “It really does sound familiar. Especially to a guy who likes old movies.”
“That’s the idea,” she said. “And it’s better than my real name, Angela Obermeir.”
He gave a little shrug without shrugging. You’re the one who should be an actor.
“Oh, I dunno,” he said. “They’re both kind of glamorous names.”
She smiled.
“For a woman with a glamorous smile,” he added, leaning toward her. “I don’t mean to sound flip, or too much like I’m some lounge lizard who does this all the time. Truth is, I looked at you and something clicked.”
“Now, that’s not very original.”
“Well, I warned you. I’m not good at this. You know what I worry about now?”
“What’s that?”
“That I might work this kind of shallow chatter too hard because I don’t know how to really get through to you.” He toyed with his glass, regarding the amber liquid. “That I might lose you when I’ve just found you.”
“Kind of like yanking too hard on a fishing pole and breaking the line?”
“Kind of like,” he admitted. He aimed those dark and deep eyes at her, at the center darker than her own. Becoming darker the longer she looked into them. “I’m trying to be honest with you, Hettie. I’d be dishonest if I thought it would help my cause.”
“I like a little dishonesty now and then.”
“Sure. But only now and then.” He seemed absolutely serious.
“The object of your game,” she said, “is for us to leave here together and go to your place or mine.”
“Or to a hotel.” He rotated slightly on his stool so he was facing her. “Listen, Hettie, half the men in here—no, more than half—would gladly cut off any appendage but one if they could leave here with you.”
“I’m not crazy about hotels,” she said.
“Neither am I.”
She was liking this guy more and more. And the way he could look deep into you…
She had to think about this, but she was already 90 percent sure of her conclusion.
He must not have liked the way the conversation was flagging.
“Maybe I’ve seen you on TV or somewhere,” he said. “What have you been in?”
She placed both elbows on the bar and leaned toward him and to the side, so their heads were almost touching and she could speak softly and directly.
“Ever heard of Dubba the Mermaid?”
“I might have,” he said. “Refresh my memory.”
Hettie smiled at him.
Maybe tomorrow when we wake up.
16
“Good thing the car’s black,” Fedderman said.
The weeks-long assault of hot weather was having its effect on the pavement. Fresh blacktop from where an early morning street crew had just patched a pothole spotted the windshield when it was thrown up from the tires of the truck ahead of Quinn’s Lincoln. Quinn used the windshield squirts and wipers and got most of it off without leaving too much of a mess on the glass.
“They’ve got chemicals that’ll take tar off,” Quinn said. He wasn’t worried about the car right now.
They were driving to a diner on First Avenue to talk to Vance Holstetter, a homicide detective who’d been Joe Galin’s partner until shortly before Galin retired. Pearl wasn’t in the car. She had listened to Quinn’s account of his conversations at Pizza Rio and asked if she could go take a run at the two delivery riders, especially Jorge, the one Quinn thought might know something.
Quinn had figured there was nothing to lose, so he’d told her to take the unmarked and go. Pearl had a way with young guys sometimes, knew how they thought and how to manipulate them. He wondered if she’d grown up with brothers. He really didn’t know much about her early life. Maybe he could ask her mother.
His cell phone chirped, and he drew it from his pocket and squinted at it cradled in his palm.
Renz calling.
He raised
the phone to his ear. “Hello, Harley.”
“Quinn, where are you?”
“Driving to meet Galin’s old partner, Vance Holstetter.”
“Something you should know: The lab’s blood pattern guys got together with the medical examiner, and they all agree about Galin.”
“That he’s dead?”
“Quit trying to be funny. There’s a complication. Galin wasn’t shot where the car was parked. The bullet didn’t kill him right away. He apparently drove to the alley by the pizza place after he took the slug.”
Quinn said nothing, trying to digest this. It was a complication, all right. No wonder nobody inside or in the vicinity of Pizza Rio saw or heard anything around the time of the shooting. Galin had been murdered someplace else.
“He couldn’t have driven far,” Renz said. “Nift says the gunshot wound was probably inflicted somewhere in Manhattan, on the East Side, judging from where the body was discovered. Galin couldn’t have lived very long after getting shot. It’s likely he took the tunnel or drove over the Fifty-ninth Street Bridge into Queens before he got too weak to get any farther.”
“Headed for home, maybe,” Quinn said. “Running on instinct while his life bled out.”
“Could be,” Renz said. “Or maybe he had a strong yen for pizza.”
The car bounced over a pothole the patching crew had missed, causing Quinn to juggle the phone and grip it tighter.
Renz must have interpreted the silence as disapproval of his joking about a dead cop and made a stab at recovering his solemnity. “It’s true you’d want to get someplace familiar if you knew you were dying,” he said in a somber tone. “Way the human mind works. Even animal minds.”
“That so?”
“Hell, I don’t know. That’s something for you to find out. You’re the detective.”
“What are you, Harley?”
“I’m a politician now,” Renz said. “Best you keep that in mind.”
He broke the connection.
Fedderman looked over from the passenger seat. “What?”
Quinn told him.
Neither man said anything for a while. Quinn realized he was driving one-handed and snapped the phone shut and slipped it back in his pocket.
“Complicates things,” Fedderman said.
“Complications are pretty much our job,” Quinn said.
He thought about calling Pearl and telling her never mind about talking to anyone at Pizza Rio. Then he remembered the guilty, knowing look in Jorge Valento’s eyes and decided not to call.
The diner on First was on a corner across from a D’Agostino market. Quinn saw a parking space almost in front of it, cut across uptown traffic, and pulled to the curb, causing a delivery van driver who’d been about to park there to give him the finger. Quinn ignored the gesture. The man blew him a kiss. Still Quinn didn’t react. The guy in the van drove farther down the street in search of parking. Fedderman thought the guy didn’t know how lucky he was.
Inside, the diner was surprisingly spacious. Lots of maroon vinyl booths and maroon vinyl padded chairs. A counter and cash register were on the immediate right, tables and booths to the left. Toward the back there was a step up and even more maroon. The breakfast crowd was gone, and among the dozen or so customers, the guy at a back booth by a window was the only one who looked like a cop, even though he was in plain clothes.
Quinn and Fedderman walked back there. Quinn noticed that though the restaurant was cool enough, it was slightly warmer in back.
The man who was surely Holstetter stood up. He was wearing a gray suit with the coat unbuttoned and was tall and skinny, with pointed features and oversized pointy ears that stuck way out like open doors. All in all, he looked like an overgrown leprechaun.
When he grinned amiably with little sharp teeth he looked even more like a leprechaun, but a sad and resigned one who hadn’t been let in on the secret of where the pot of gold was.
“Holstetter,” he said, like an admission of guilt.
Quinn nodded and shook hands. “I’m Quinn. This is Larry Fedderman.”
Fedderman and Holstetter shook hands, then everybody sat down. A waiter in white was there from out of nowhere, and Quinn and Fedderman ordered coffee. That was all Holstetter had in front of him on the table. Cops drinking coffee at 11 A.M. It was probably happening all over the world.
“You guys wanna order some doughnuts?” Holstetter asked. “They’re good here.”
“No, thanks,” Quinn said. “I don’t want to be a stereotype.”
Holstetter flashed an oversized tired-pixie smile. “I thought since we got the coffee, we might as well go all the way.”
Quinn figured Holstetter was treading water, stalling before getting to the Q-and-A part of the conversation. Quinn thought they were wasting time.
“Tell us about Galin,” he said.
Holstetter used both hands to revolve his cup slowly on its saucer, then he sat back in the maroon upholstery. “Me and Galin were friends. Know that right off.”
Quinn nodded. “Two guys work together a while, it happens.”
“I wouldn’t be saying this at all, only Joe’s dead, so what’s it matter? He’s got no family except his wife, and he wasn’t crazy about her. Talked all the time about leaving her.”
Quinn thought June Galin might be surprised to hear that.
“And what I’m about to tell you, it might not be true anyway,” Holstetter said.
Nobody spoke for almost a minute.
“Go or no go?” Quinn asked.
“I think Galin might have been on the take,” Holstetter said.
Quinn saw the hardness that came over his features. Cops didn’t talk like this about their former partners unless they were dead certain it was true.
“I wouldn’t say that, only it might help nail whoever did Galin.”
“Might,” Quinn agreed.
“The thing is, I’ve got no real proof of it. But Galin and I talked a lot with each other, confided some things. He never quite said he was taking protection money, but he came close. And once he was carrying a hell of a roll of cash. Flashing it like he kinda wanted me to ask where he got it, if you know what I mean.”
Quinn nodded. “Did you?”
“Ask? No. I didn’t want to know.”
“But you knew.”
“I guess so.”
Still unwilling to be definite about his former partner. A good cop.
“This was when you were working narcotics?” Fedderman asked.
“Yeah. It woulda been so simple to go on the take. Drug money. Nasty stuff, floating all over the street in those days. Both of us had our offers, but we always turned them down. At least I thought we both did. It wasn’t easy.”
“They know how to make it hard,” Fedderman said. “Then when you take that first shitty dollar they own you.”
“Maybe they owned Galin. That’s all I’m saying, is maybe.”
“But you think the odds are pretty good,” Quinn said.
“I wouldn’t be here otherwise.”
“Got anybody in mind who might have had Galin in his pocket?”
“Maybe. A dealer name of Vernon Lake. I couldn’t tell you why I think that. Just the way they talked or looked at each other sometimes, like they shared a secret. Hey, this was all a long time ago. I don’t even know if Lake’s still around. These guys have got life expectancies like fruit flies.”
“Where’d Lake sell?”
“All over, but mostly down in the Village. Best friend of lots of college kids that hit the clubs down there.”
“He live in the Village?”
“Doubt it. They don’t like fouling their own nests. I think he lived over in Brooklyn or Queens. Far enough away so the heat wouldn’t singe him.”
“Did it strike you that Galin had a lifestyle beyond a cop’s salary?”
Holstetter stared into his coffee cup, then looked up and met Quinn’s gaze. “Yes and no. I mean, he had a modest enough house, didn’t wear fla
shy or expensive clothes, or spend his vacations in Europe. But he had a Rolex watch, said it was a knockoff he bought down on Canal Street. I think it was genuine, worth over twenty thou.”
“President?” Fedderman asked.
“Huh?”
“That’s the expensive Rolex.”
“Probably was. It had diamonds for numbers. Looked real to me, like the gold looked real. He didn’t wear it all the time, just when he was trying to impress somebody. We’d go out at night sometimes, talk up women in bars or restaurants. Seldom led anywhere, though, except to trouble for me once. I think Galin just wanted to show off, know he could score if he wanted to.”
“He never did score?”
“Couple of times. Not in any way meaningful. He’d throw money around, flash the watch and his gold cufflinks. He did have a few suits and jackets that’d put a strain on a cop’s salary.”
“He wasn’t wearing an expensive watch when he was shot,” Quinn said. “And there wasn’t all this gold or a Rolex in his dresser drawers or mentioned when we talked to his wife.”
Holstetter grinned. “June wouldn’t have known about that stuff. Galin was planning on a life beyond early retirement that didn’t include her.”
“According to her, they were happy enough,” Fedderman said.
“Maybe they were. Maybe Joe changed his mind. Life’s complicated.”
“We were talking about that on the drive over here,” Fedderman said.
“Complicated as…shit,” Holstetter said.
Quinn knew that for a fact. The most profound things in life happened in a place beyond words and easy explanations, behind a thick, impenetrable curtain. Now and then the curtain parted slightly to allow a glimpse. Sometimes it was horrifying.
“I never dreamed I’d ever be sitting someplace ratting out my dead partner,” Holstetter said, “but it seems like the only thing I can do if I want his killer brought down.”
“Always the rock and the hard place,” Quinn said.
“Ain’t that the damned truth?”
Quinn figured Holstetter had said all he was going to say that might be useful. He knew where the conversation was going now. It was time to leave. He’d been in these maudlin cop confabs too many times over the years. All that was missing here were the doughnuts.