“Someone broke in two nights ago and took some things of mine. I want them back.”
“How’d they do that? It’d be easier crashing out of Attica, all the equipment you have.”
Nicholas opened the top drawer of a Lombard marquetry commode and balanced a flat gray rock in his palm. “It seems that this is the key to the Walker SafeTech system,” he said. “They used it to break a window in the back of the house and then climbed in. I don’t know why the alarm didn’t sound. I can’t get an honest answer from the people at Walker.”
You can’t go to the police either. Bucyk felt another laugh coming on and he brought his hand to his mouth and coughed inside it. “What’d they get?”
“Thirteen thousand in cash, a coin collection I’ve had since I was a boy and half a dozen portraits of early American whaling captains’ wives that I just picked up at auction.”
“Congratulations,” Bucyk said. “What do you have it insured for, three times what it’s worth, four?”
Nicholas glared at him as though his patience was overmatched. “If word gets around—and it will—that characters can come in here like it’s a supermarket and take what they want, I’ll have to get out of business. If I live long enough. I don’t intend to let that happen if the insurance company pays ten times the value of what I lost.”
“What do you want me to do? If it’s gone, it’s gone.”
“The time I was upstate,” Nicholas said, “I celled with a small-time fence from Staten Island by the name of Whitey Louie. The man was a classic sociopath, without a spark of humanity, serving twenty-five years to life for murder two. The only time he opened his mouth was to shovel food in or to cry about his dog, a Staffordshire terrier he called Mikey. Mikey was another sociopath, you could say, and Whitey Louie loved him the way he would a woman—by which I mean he fed him every other day and kept him chained in the garage that he used as a warehouse. One night a pro who was looking to steal back some goods that he’d sold to Whitey Louie broke into the garage. He hadn’t taken two steps when Mikey ripped open his thigh, and the pro was lucky that he was still holding his pry bar and got in a few licks before Mikey swallowed any vital organs. When Whitey Louie found the dog dead, he told me, his first instinct was to call a priest and bury Mikey in the family plot on Long Island. I believe he would have done it if he hadn’t had his priorities in order. Instead, he put Mikey in the deep freeze while he made a few discreet inquiries, and the next time the pro came around to do business Whitey Louie hauled out the carcass, which was like a boulder by then, and crushed the pro’s head with it. Then he drove to the Silver Lake golf course and laid out both stiffs on the eighteenth green in full view of the clubhouse.”
“And this Whitey Louie, this genius, he got sent up on account of a dog?”
“You’re missing the moral of the story.”
“Maybe not,” Bucyk said. “What’ve we got in the freezer?”
Nicholas opened the commode and then held up an object that was half hidden in his hand. “Do you know what this is?” he asked.
Bucyk climbed the steps and stood beside him. “A walkie-talkie,” he said. “Like beat officers wear on the street.”
“Exactly like those?”
“This one’s not so big.” Bucyk examined the brand name and then turned it over in his hand. “Look here,” he said as if he couldn’t get the words out fast enough. “The serial number’s been filed off the back. Where’d you get this?”
“I found it in the shrubbery the morning after the break-in,” Nicholas said. “I thought you might be able to tell me something about it.”
“Me?”
“You were a detective, weren’t you?”
“You want Sherlock Holmes.”
“Yes, but I’m paying you.”
Bucyk looked closely at the walkie-talkie again. “Okay,” he said, “one burglar working alone doesn’t need something like this, so you know you’re up against a gang. The question is how many of them there are and who.” Using his thumbnail and then a dime as screwdrivers, he went to work on the back plate. “Maybe we find out in here.
“If the serial number was still in place,” he told Nicholas, “you wouldn’t have a problem going to the distributor and finding out which store sold this particular walkie-talkie. What we have, it’s like trying to trace a car that’s missing the license plate and the engine number and the vehicle identification number.” He removed two small screws and cupped them in his hand. “My guess is that whoever bought this had their own crystals. It wouldn’t be real bright to use the standard frequencies, because half of Queens would be listening in. If these guys didn’t, if they put in crystals, we could get a break.”
“How?”
“Even in New York there aren’t so many places that can do that kind of work. And each one has their own number they’re supposed to stamp right on the crystal.” The plate came off and he dropped it on the commode.
“Be careful,” Nicholas told him. “You’ll scratch that.”
Bucyk said, “Can we have some light in here? The atmosphere is murder on my eyes.”
Nicholas went out of the room. When he came back he placed a felt pad on the commode and a tensor lamp on top of that. Bucyk lowered the bulb over the walkie-talkie. “See, there’s four crystals in there. If I can just get my …” He worked one loose and brought it out between his thumb and forefinger. “You see this number, 776, that’s the store code. What I have to do next is find out whose it is and go down and talk to the people there.” He raised the light and turned to Nicholas with a self-satisfied smile.
“Well?” Nicholas asked.
“Well what?”
“What are you waiting for?”
Bucyk’s smile, and the satisfaction that had prompted it, evaporated. “Where’s a phone?” he asked.
“Use the one in the kitchen.”
Bucyk had found something else to smile about by the time he returned to the living room. “One of my old cop buddies is at least still talking to me,” he announced.
“What did you learn?”
“Seven seventy-six,” he said, holding a slip of paper nearly at arm’s length, “is Randy’s Radio Repair on Dyckman Street.”
“Where’s that?”
“Way uptown. In Inwood.”
“Are you familiar with it?”
“If you’re asking does the shop have a shady reputation, the answer is no. A lot of these radio nuts, they just want their privacy, so they can talk dirty to each other I think. A good store would see plenty of orders for work like this.”
“You’ll go there right away?” Nicholas asked.
Bucyk waved off the idea. “If I bring this in now they’ll say, ‘Yeah, that’s our number, but we could’ve done the work for a million different people.’ No,” he said, “it’s too soon for Randy’s.”
“What are you going to do?”
“There’s this radio technician downtown on Varick Street,” Bucyk said. “From time to time he works for the department, and there’s times he does some work for the competition. To him it’s all the same. The important thing, he knows the inside of a walkie-talkie like he lives there. I’ll have him run a bench test on the crystals to calibrate the frequencies. Once I have them, I can go through Randy’s work sheets for the order that matches up. I think that’s the way to proceed on this.”
“You know,” Nicholas said, “there are occasions when you amaze me.”
“Same here,” Bucyk said.
“It’s been more than a week. Where are you?”
“These things take time,” Bucyk said.
“Evidently—”
“But sometimes it’s worth the wait. I was right about the crystals. They were special orders. The frequencies were 151.633, 151.647, 151.682 and 151.723.”
“That means nothing to me,” Nicholas said.
“Me neither, not at first anyway, not until I went up to Inwood, to Randy’s Radio. It’s a big place, bigger than you’d expect in a neighb
orhood like this. I had to sort through four hundred goddamn work orders before I found the one that was the same as the four crystals. And when I did, it turned out the customer who wanted them calls himself Joe Smith.”
“Great. That’s just—”
“Hold your horses,” Bucyk said.
Nicholas asked, “Did you get an address—?”
“You going to let me finish, or not?”
“Go ahead.”
“No,” Bucyk said. “There was no address, and of course he’d paid cash so there was no check or credit-card receipt either. What there was, though, was a new order for four more crystals, also special calibrations, and for a … let me try and get this right … for a Maxon CPO520 walkie-talkie, from the same Joe Smith. At least I say it’s the same Joe Smith. Randy, he’s not so sure.”
“Why wouldn’t he be?”
“This is where it gets interesting. After I jogged his memory, Randy said he sort of remembered Joe Smith after all. It seems when he came in the store the first time he had a dog with him, a big one, like this Mikey you were telling me about. Except that it was white, a Russian wolfhound, Randy said.”
Nicholas said, “That is interesting.”
“When he came back again Joe Smith didn’t have the dog. Maybe because it’s too much trouble to hang on to a leash when your arm’s in a wrist-to-elbow cast, like you’ve just had the first of a number of bad accidents.”
“Then you shouldn’t have any trouble recognizing him when you see him,” Nicholas said.
“I don’t expect to.”
“One more thing. Before you make your point with him, there’s some information I’d like you to get out of Joe Smith.”
“Yes?”
“Ask him what a krytron is. Those things are taking up too much room in my safe.”
Bucyk said, “I have to go now. There’s an old lady standing outside who wants to use the phone.”
The midnight-blue van crawled along Dyckman Street oblivious to the press of traffic. On the driver’s side a large mirror was tilted away from the body like a chromed elephant’s ear. At the intersection with Broadway the van stopped at a green light and remained there through two more. It didn’t start up again until a man wearing a scruffy beard appeared in the glass holding a small package in his one good hand.
Bucyk leaned on the gas until the van was nearly a block ahead of Harry. He was partial to advance tails. Too often, following from the rear, he lagged so far behind that he lost sight of a subject and was shaken. This way was harder, but more reliable.
Harry turned uptown on Seaman Avenue, and Bucyk circled the block and then led the way along the edge of Inwood Hill Park. Where the street ended at Baker Field, he watched Harry go into an apartment house opposite the grandstand. Bucyk parked in front and ran into the lobby as Harry was entering the elevator. Bucyk caught the closing door and stepped in after him. “Just made it,” he said.
Harry pressed four without looking at him.
“Nice day.” Bucyk smiled. “If it doesn’t rain.”
Harry grunted. The gate slid open and he twisted around and put his back to the door and pushed out.
Bucyk followed him. “Know where the Mortons live?” he asked in the hall.
Harry shrugged. Walking away, he wedged the package against a hip with the heavy cast. With his other hand he pulled keys from his pants. He turned the doorknob, and as he dragged his feet over the sill his head snapped back as Bucyk rammed a shoulder into his lower back and drove him inside.
Harry broke his fall with his good hand, gasping for air as his midsection came down on the package. He rolled over in time to see Bucyk jam the metal bar between the Fox lock on the door and the floor plate. Harry was gathering his legs under him when Bucyk went across the room in no particular hurry and kneed him in the side.
Bucyk raised his right foot, perching on the left like a wading bird too full to strike at prey. Harry hid behind his good hand, and then Bucyk juked and buried a blunt leather toe between the exposed ribs under Harry’s arm. A bleating sound escaped Harry’s nose. His ear struck a corner of a low table and then the floor. “Who are you?” he wheezed.
“I’m the guy, you borrowed some stuff from a friend of his.” Bucyk’s gaze drifted into the kitchen where an empty dog bowl stood against a wall. “From two friends.”
“They offering a reward, it gets returned?”
Bucyk poised his foot again, but put it down as a smile played a limited engagement across his lips. He unbuttoned his jacket and pulled out the .357 Magnum. “You think I’m fooling,” he said, waving the gun impatiently. “We’re wasting time. Where is it?”
“The coins … you want the coins?”
The revolver stopped moving.
“Look in the cabinet over the refrigerator,” Harry said.
Bucyk stuffed the gun in his waistband and went into the kitchen. Above the refrigerator were glass doors thick with yellowing paint. Standing on his toes, he pulled all of them open. “I don’t see anything,” he called into the other room. “For your sake, you’d better not be bullshitting me.”
Harry struggled to his knees. Eight feet away was an ancient Dumont television and underneath it, inside the drawer of an end table, was his starter’s pistol. Sensing eyes on his back, he turned away. “I took ’em out of the albums,” he said. “They’re in three cloth bags, behind the empties.”
Bucyk used both arms to sweep the cabinets clean of an assortment of beer bottles that rolled across the top of the refrigerator before splintering against the floor. Then he reached in as far as he could, but came up only with two earthenware rose wine jugs. He slid a three-legged chair close to the refrigerator and climbed up carefully. “Yeah,” he said, “I see them now, in back.”
Harry edged toward the end table. He was still three feet away when he saw Bucyk balanced awkwardly on the chair with the bags in one hand.
“Now where are the pictures?” Bucyk asked.
“In the storage area under the sink.”
Bucyk jumped down and dropped the bags on the counter. Below the sink metal doors on bent hinges framed a horizontal opening. As he knelt in front of the black space, he heard Harry say, “I’d be careful, I was you.”
“What?”
“Isaac’s sleepin’ in there, watchin’ over the artwork. He doesn’t know you, don’t be in such a hurry to stick your hand in.”
Bucyk muttered something that reverberated in the darkness. The other wise guy, that Nathan, had almost fooled him like that before. Twice he didn’t fall for anything. He yanked one of the doors off its hinges and stuck his head inside defiantly.
Harry screamed, “Kill, Isaac, kill, kill!”
Fucking jerk, Bucyk said to himself, and listened to the echo of his own laughter. He leaned in further and ducked under the pipes to poke around the grimy corners.
Either the guy was deaf, or else he didn’t have a nerve in his body, Harry decided. Anybody normal would have panicked, or at least been startled long enough for him to whip out the starter’s pistol. But the guy hadn’t even flinched, just gone in deeper. It took Harry a second to realize that no reaction was as good as too much. He tore open the drawer and clamped the gun in his fist and went into the kitchen as Bucyk was backing out from under the sink.
“I told you I wasn’t fooling,” Bucyk said, and started to turn around. His hand was at his waist when Harry showed him a dark muzzle that was smooth where a gunsight should have been.
“Squat down,” Harry said.
Bucyk’s hand inched closer to his belt before it moved away again. As he went down on his haunches, Harry told him, “Now step on your hands.”
“Huh?”
“Understand English?”
Bucyk lifted his right heel and slipped his fingers underneath, slid his left palm under his toes. Harry pocketed the starter’s pistol and snatched the Magnum from Bucyk’s pants. He pointed the heavy gun at the crouching man, hefted it experimentally and then slammed the cylinder a
gainst Bucyk’s temple and watched him crumple.
“Ouch,” Harry said. “That must hurt.”
Bucyk fell onto his side and rolled away, suppressing a moan welling deep in his guts.
“Where you goin’?” Harry asked. “Get up.”
Bucyk raised himself off the floor, holding his head, and Harry motioned him into the corner where the dog bowl lay beside the stove. “Turn around,” Harry said, drawing a circle in the air with the gun, “so I don’t have to see your kisser. You look like shit.”
Harry pressed the Magnum against Bucyk’s shoulders and traced the bulging cords in his neck up to his ear. He drew back his finger on the trigger slowly, so that Bucyk could hear the tension increasing in the spring.
“Nothin’ I’d like better,” Harry said, “but the apartment’s rented under my own name.” He let his finger relax. “Don’t even think about moving.”
Harry stepped back and put the gun down on the counter. Unbuttoning his shirt, he dropped a bag of coins inside, gritting his teeth as it nestled against his ribs. He fit in another carefully. There was no room for the third, and he turned it upside down and scattered the coins on the linoleum with his foot.
“I’m takin’ off now,” Harry said. “You’re still interested in the pictures, check the closet. You want the coins …” He dug his heel into the mound on the floor, making a cold metallic chinking. “Be my guest. But you leave here before I’m gone five minutes, you’ll wish you were never born, got that?”
Bucyk snorted.
“So make yourself at home.”
Bucyk heard footsteps retreating from the kitchen and then a silence marred by the opening and closing of the door. Groping in the small of his back for the tiny holster in which he kept his second gun, a 9-mm Beretta, he told himself: The fucking jerk must’ve learned that routine from every B picture that ever got made. He waded through the coins and hurried into the other room and pulled open the door. As he put a foot outside, he heard his front teeth break and then there was a moment of unendurable pain before darkness swallowed him up.
“I told you to wait,” Harry said from beside the door as he brought the Magnum into Bucyk’s face a second time and watched him pitch onto the floor. Then he relieved him of the automatic and rolled him inside the apartment.
Little Odessa Page 18