Chin - 04 - No Colder Place

by S. J. Rozan

  In the morning, things were different. I was in St. Luke’s, I had a mild concussion, I had a different needle in my other arm and drugs in me, and I woke up with Lydia sitting by the side of my bed and one question in my mind.

  “Hi,” Lydia smiled when she saw my eyes were open.

  “DiMaio,” I croaked. “What—?”

  Lydia blinked. “‘Oh, Lydia, so nice to see you’re alive too,’” she said airily.

  “You’re beautiful,” I said, my voice hoarse, my throat scratchy. “I’m mad about you. I’m glad you’re alive. I wouldn’t want you any other way. DiMaio—”

  “Who, me?”

  That came from the chair beside Lydia, which, squinting, I realized was occupied too. I tried to move so I could see better, was reminded that movement ought to be slow for a while. I let the pain pass, grunted, “Yeah. You.”

  DiMaio grinned. That made everyone in the room smiling except me.

  “Where—?” I said, swallowed to ease the dryness. “What—?”

  “You mean, how come I popped up out of nowhere last night just in time to save your ass?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I mean that.”

  “Well,” he said, still grinning, resettling himself in his chair, “I was up here visiting Reg last night, you know, telling him what you were gonna do. And it’s funny, but when a guy doesn’t answer, you have to kind of do his part of the thinking, too.”

  “Sort of like what I have to do,” Lydia remarked parenthetically, with a sweet smile at me.

  I growled at her, “You think just because I’m lying here—”

  “Oh, no,” she protested. “I think that’s why you’re lying there.”

  “Mike,” I sighed, “go on.”

  With a grin from her to me, DiMaio continued. “So, anyway, I thought to myself, if you screwed up—uh, I mean, if anything happened to you—maybe there wasn’t anyone else who knew what you knew. See, I didn’t know about Lydia then.” They smiled at each other. My head hurt.

  DiMaio went on. “So I thought, maybe these bastards’ll get away with all the shit they’ve been pulling, if Smith screws up. Maybe no one’ll ever pay for what happened to Reg. And I said that out loud to Reg, that I was worried about that. And you know what?”

  “What?”

  “He woke up. He looked at me. He didn’t say anything, but he looked at me. Like he knew how it was when you and me was laying bricks together. You know?”

  “Uh-huh.” I knew.

  “So when he did that, I knew what I was supposed to do. I was supposed to get my ass back to that trailer and make sure everything went all right.”

  “Christ,” I mumbled. “A babysitter.”

  “One you needed,” Lydia said.

  “We needed,” I pointed out.

  “True. And I already thanked him.”

  I looked at DiMaio, met his clear blue eyes. I was searching for the words, the right ones, but he stood, stuck his hands in his pockets, grinned again. He said, “Nah. Wouldn’t be like you, Smith. Say something nice, I might pass out or something.”

  “My job,” I said. “Passing out. Hey.”

  “Hey what?”

  “Speaking of jobs. Why aren’t you at work?”

  DiMaio looked away. “Site’s closed down today.”

  “Shit,” I breathed. “Just today?”

  He shrugged. “For a while. Mrs. Armstrong’s there, Crowell’s bonding company’s there. Cops, auditors, Christ knows what.”

  “Jesus,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

  “Oh, I don’t know.” The grin came back suddenly. “My money’s on Mrs. Armstrong. Word is, she made it clear she’ll be goddamned if she’s gonna stop this building. When the men showed up this morning, they told us call tomorrow. Seems like some trades could be back to work in a day or two.”

  “That’s good news.”

  DiMaio, hands still in his pockets, looked down at the floor, pushed at something with the toe of his workboot. “Lozano was there. I saw him.”

  “What did he say?”

  “Nothing. He had nothing to say to me, I had nothing to say to him. Just looked at each other. Shit.” He shook his head. “I liked that guy.”

  “I know. So did I.”

  Lydia rose from her chair, stood next to DiMaio. “Now that you’re conscious,” she said to me, “go back to sleep. The police will come by later, to talk to you. I already spoke to Bzomowski and Mackey.”

  “They know about Hamilton?” I asked. “About me being there?”

  She nodded. DiMaio glanced from me to her, seemed about to ask something. Lydia stopped him with a look, the kind that says, I’ll tell you later.

  “They’re pissed?” I asked her.

  “Angry but ready to talk. Depending on what you have to offer, it will probably turn out all right. You want me to stay, for when they come?”

  “No,” I said, closing my eyes, inviting the soft darkness back. It didn’t come, just regular tiredness, and relief. “No, I’ll deal with them. You kids run along.”

  I opened my eyes briefly when I heard DiMaio snort, smiled and closed them again as Lydia leaned forward and brushed her soft lips on my cheek.

  Chuck came to see me later that day, moving through the door hesitantly, with a worried smile. Whether the worry was for how I was, or for how things were between us, wasn’t clear.

  “Hey,” he said, looking down at me from the side of the bed. “You still speaking to me?”

  “Why not?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “Oh, I don’t know. I lied to you. I sent you into what turned out to be a den of God-knows-what. You came this close to getting killed and it wasn’t me had anything to do with pulling you out. Other than that, I guess, no reason.”

  “Hell,” I said, “every friendship has its problems.”

  He relaxed then, but after that, I didn’t have much to say to him, though I wasn’t sure why. Something I’d heard, something I knew, kept me from hearing him, from saying to him anything he didn’t know. I was waiting, until I could think more clearly, remember better.

  He seemed to take it as a symptom, the sleepiness and distraction of a man with a concussion. I let him think that, didn’t tell him about Falco and the ferry, didn’t ask him anything. Finally, he left.

  The cops were easier. Bzomowski and Mackey turned out to be okay guys, one tall, one shorter, one light, one dark, one younger, one about my age. They were pissed off at me because I was there when Hamilton was shot and never told them; they were pissed off because I’d been investigating and hadn’t given them anything I’d found; they were pissed off because I was a P.I. and they were cops. I couldn’t blame them for any of that.

  Given all that, though, the interview went smoothly, only two or three threats to pull my license, only one—from Bzomowski—to throw me in jail the minute I got out of the hospital. It was a chess game and we all knew it. I would give them everything I had, except some sources—in this case, Maggio—that they would half-heartedly try to squeeze out of me. I would testify if the case came to court, though the way it looked, it wouldn’t: Dan Junior’s lawyer, at the request of his client, was already working on a plea bargain, all charges against the old man to be dropped in return for Junior-tells-all. And I would keep my license with the provisional warning that I wouldn’t be this lucky if I ever crossed their paths again.

  Then—five years from now in Bzomowski’s case, ten in Mackey’s—I’d be drinking in some cop watering hole and some cop I knew would tell me that a detective buddy of his had put in his twenty years, resigned, and gotten himself a private license, guy was pretty good, did I have any business I didn’t want I could throw his way, get him started off? And I’d say sure, no problem; I’d finish my beer and leave my card. In between that and this it wasn’t likely I’d see these guys again.

  So when Bzomowski and Mackey decided we were through, and my hospital room was empty again, my mind went back to Chuck. I tried to loosen the reins, let my thoughts wander, see if
whatever it was I was uneasy about would surface. I knew who’d killed Pelligrini, Romeo, Hamilton; I knew who’d attacked Reg Phillips. I knew about Falco, as far as he went with Chuck; I knew that was what Chuck hadn’t been telling me. Chuck had admitted it, even apologized for it.

  So what was my problem?

  Falco’s connection, that was one of the things still bothering me. I let it rise to the top, watched it and considered it, but didn’t try to pin it down. Like working on a piece of music I didn’t understand, I made myself stop trying to get it to be what I wanted, and just look and work with it and see what it was.

  Chuck had told me Falco was connected on that site. That’s why he’d been so eager to take this job on when it came, because it might be his way to shut down Falco at last.

  But Dan Crowell, Jr. said he didn’t know him. No point in lying about that. He would have been better off saying, Yeah, the Mafia made me do it. Bzomowski and Mackey would have eaten it up; that’s the kind of stuff that can make a cop’s career, if he can bring it home.

  So what then? Falco behind someone smaller, Lozano maybe, or one of the other subs? I didn’t see it. Not enough money to be made. Behind the guy buying the stolen equipment? Not close enough. Not on the site.

  Maybe Chuck was wrong.

  I let that idea float around for a while, a new variation, a disharmony that changed the nature of the piece completely.

  Chuck had said Falco was tied in here, but he’d gotten that from someone he referred to as “street scum.” Maybe he was just wrong. Maybe there was no connection. It wasn’t as though you needed one to explain any of these things, anything that had happened.

  I followed the new idea, to see what would happen if it were true, if Falco were out of the picture. What I found out was that I was still uneasy, that something else was still eating at me. I tried some more to figure out what it was, but I got nowhere. I’d just decided to forget it, to let the question stay where it was, moving vaguely in the shadows in my head, maybe see if sleep would make a difference in my outlook, when the bedside phone rang.

  “Hi,” I said, figuring it was Lydia, wanting her to think I was feeling good.

  “For a man who’s just caused an enormous amount of disruption which he almost didn’t survive himself, you’re remarkably cheerful,” a woman’s voice told me drily.

  “Mrs. Armstrong. How are you?”

  “Probably better than you, though it’s likely I’ve had less sleep,” she answered.

  “Every cloud has a silver lining. To what do I owe the honor?”

  “Damage control,” she said bluntly.

  “Are you at the site?”

  “Yes,” she said. “I have been since the police called me last night, about the same time the EMS took you out of here. This is the first chance I’ve had to be alone, and I don’t know how long it will last.”

  “And you’re calling me? I’m flattered.”

  “Don’t be. The amount of trouble you’ve caused here will take me months to undo.”

  “I didn’t cause it,” I pointed out, though probably uselessly. “I just uncovered it.”

  “In as public and dramatic a way as possible.”

  “Is that why you’re calling? To complain? Because if it is, call tomorrow, okay? Or maybe next month.”

  “It’s not. I’m calling, as I said, for damage control. I want to know what you told the police.”

  “Everything. Did you expect me not to?”

  Blowing right past my question, she said, “Specifically, did you tell them it was I who led you to Chester Hamilton?”

  “Specifically,” I said, “no, I didn’t.”

  She seemed to breathe a sigh of relief. “May I ask why not?”

  “It didn’t seem necessary. I don’t like to confuse cops with more facts than they need.”

  “Well, in any case, thank you,” she said, making it clear by her tone that she didn’t believe my answer. “I appreciate your discretion.”

  “It’s my alter ego,” I said. “When I’m not being public and dramatic. Now may I ask you why you care? Even if it got out, the public-relations problem you’d have if the world knew you could find your way to a guy like Chester Hamilton couldn’t possibly hold a candle to the problems you have right now.”

  “No. But it would create problems of its own.”

  “Your source,” I said, guessing. “He doesn’t want his cover blown.”

  “Can you blame him?”

  “No,” I said. “He could probably get himself killed if something like that got out. Very altruistic of you, very protective. To spend your brief time alone calling me to look after your source.”

  “Am I hearing sarcasm from you, Mr. Smith?”

  “Or is it that you’re not through with him? Is it that you need him for something else, this source?”

  “In fact I do. He’s indispensible to me in other ways. You know, Mr. Smith, I almost regret the relationship you and I have established.”

  “You mean the fact that we ever met?”

  “No, I mean the way we dislike each other. Under other circumstances I think we might have worked well together.”

  “Maybe. If you ever want to try it out, give me a call.”

  I hung up and closed my eyes into a drugged sleep with the thought in mind that there was one prospective client I didn’t ever have to worry about taking on. In a cushioned, slightly hazy state that I knew was hiding a hell of a headache, I drifted off without being able to think of a single circumstance under which Denise Armstrong would call me.

  And she didn’t. I called her.

  Toward evening, nurses and doctors came and went, orderlies did the same, then the nurses came back with something to stick in my arm and something they told me was dinner. I was hungry, which was good, they said. I was also desperate for a cigarette, which I didn’t mention, because they wouldn’t have said it was good. They were pretty sour, those nurses. If they’d had a cigarette, they probably wouldn’t have given it to me anyway, I mused dreamily as I ate. Not generous. Not like Louie Falco, offering me a Cuban cigar on the Staten Island Ferry, even though the breeze would make it burn faster than a cigar that good should. Not that I was a cigar aficionado. I could take them or leave them, though if Falco were here right now offering me that cigar, I’d take it. I’d—

  If Louie Falco were here right now, offering me that cigar.

  That legit Cuban cigar.

  A small electric jolt ran up my spine as the rest of the pieces fell into place.

  I swallowed the dregs of my coffee—decaf, this was a hospital—and grabbed for the phone. I called Denise Armstrong’s office.

  She was there, late in the workday though it was. I asked her. She told me.

  I put the phone down, lay back on the pillow. I closed my eyes to shut out the drab brightness of the hospital walls. In my head, the Scriabin études began to play, effortlessly, clearly, their crystal notes and dark chords leading inevitably from one to another, back again, around. Listening, I went with it, felt the rightness of it, the completeness and the truth. I marvelled at how something so obvious and so right could have remained hidden for so long. I ached to get back to my piano, to try it for myself.

  I wanted a cigarette more desperately than ever. I wondered if there was any way I could get out of the hospital tonight.

  I decided there probably wasn’t, so I settled for calling Lydia. She’d called me late in the afternoon, to see how I was. I’d been better and told her so, we’d talked for a while, and that had been pretty much that. She’d offered to come back up here to visit, but she was all the way down in Chinatown, I could hear her mother in the background, probably complaining about me, and I was sleepy anyway. I’d told her not to bother.

  “Even though the sight of your gorgeous face would act as a balm on my wounds, a salve to my injuries, a tonic to my system—”

  “I don’t know that I want to be a tonic to your system,” she’d told me. “I’ll come collect you in
the morning, if they let you go.”

  “They will,” I’d said, even then aching for a smoke. “If they know what’s good for them.”

  “I think they’re supposed to worry about what’s good for you.”

  “And who worries about what’s good for you?”

  “My mother. She’d doing it right now. See you in the morning.”

  That’s how that had gone, but that was before the puzzle was complete, all the connections made, the links and variations and reverberations clear to me. I didn’t like it, but I believed it, and I called Lydia to talk it over with her.

  She wasn’t there.

  Out, about, somewhere. Probably having a good time. Maybe with DiMaio. Certainly none of my business.

  All right, then. Deal with it all in the morning. Nothing to be done now, Smith. Nothing except sleep.

  So I tried to sleep.

  To my surprise, I succeeded.

  twenty-three

  in the morning, Lydia came to take me home.

  “Not home,” I said, as we stepped out onto the sidewalk in the shadow of St. Luke’s. The air was clear, the day starting out hot but dry. The perfect blue of the cloudless sky was the color Lydia’s eyes would be, if she had blue eyes.

  “In your condition, where else do you expect to go?” she asked me.

  “I’m in great condition,” I told her. “Fit as a fiddle, strong as a bull, happy as a clam—”

  “And dumb as a post. You need to go home and rest.”

  “Will that make me smarter?”

  “Unlikely.”

  “Then let’s not bother.”

  “You know,” she said, “I’m getting a little tired of this.”

  “Of what?”

  “This macho, stand-aside-ma’am, Bill-Smith-is-a-tough-guy stuff. This is something new with you, since you started being a construction worker.”