Shadow of a Thief

by Norman Green

  Chapter Sixteen

  I lost my raincoat and stuff, I must have left it all wadded up and shoved underneath the bench at NYU. Funny, how naked I felt without my disguise, funny how people looked right past me while I was wearing it. I could stand the coat collar up, tuck my face, shamble along and become almost invisible. But funniest of all were the feelings that crowded in on me when I did it. Sure, it was safer for me to be invisible, but at those times I was oppressed by a bone-deep loneliness. It was a horrible sensation, that even strangers going past in the street, people I’d never met and probably never would, they, too, ignored me, turned their faces away and pretended I wasn’t there. I’d had to keep reminding myself that I had good and valid reasons for wanting to be overlooked, and that would suffice, barely, to keep the coat in place, but as I walked back to Avenue C and Tenth Street, in spite of the increased risk to my person, I had to admit that I was glad to be rid of the damn thing.

  Much harder for me to look past a homeless person after that.

  Yeah, man, I see you.

  And I know you’re fucked up. Maybe just a little bit more than the rest of us, but we’re probably more like you than either of us think.

  I saw the tall kid with the motorcycle again. It took me a moment or two to remember where I’d seen him before, but he was Aniri’s boyfriend, I’d seen him following the limo that bore her off to her next appointment. And those of us for whom lurking is a profession are always amused by the efforts of those who suck at it. The kid was loitering in front of the bodega where I liked to get my coffee; he was drinking bottled water and pretending to read the newspaper. He was too big to blend in, for one thing, and for another, he was a white boy to a degree rarely attained by native or even transplanted New Yorkers. He had a cowlick, for God’s sake, he wore the bottom two inches of his jeans turned up, and he wore a blue denim jacket that almost, but not quite, matched his jeans. Made you wonder where he’d left his horse. I looked around for the motorcycle, spotted it parked a block south on C.

  I walked up behind him. I didn’t have to go all Snidely Whiplash on the guy, either, his entire being seemed focused on the front door to the Los Paraíso. I got up close, and in what I thought was a passable imitation of the Worm, I said, “We thought you gone, man.”

  His startle response was almost all physical. He hardly made a sound but his water bottle went straight up in the air and his paper devolved into a bunch of litter blowing down the street. He whirled around, his hands turning to fists and taking up residence on either side of his chin.

  Not bad, really.

  “Not funny,” he said, breathing hard. “Are you with them?”

  “What would you do if I was, you fucking idiot? These are not Boy Scouts you’re messing with.”

  He dropped his hands. “I know. I just wanted to see her.”

  “Walk with me,” I told him.

  “We can’t go to the police,” the kid said. We were a couple of blocks south on C, still out on the sidewalk because he didn’t want to go in anywhere. He didn’t want to be with me, either, he was so antsy he could hardly stand still. He couldn’t wait to get back to his corner.

  “Why not?”

  “She’s undocumented, man. If the police did raid that place, they’d arrest Aniri along with everyone else, and they’d put her in jail, they’d try her and put her away. And when her time was done they’d deport her.”

  “So run away. Get on a bus and take her back to Alabama with you.”

  “It’s South Carolina,” he said sourly. “And they know who I am. They know where my folks live. They’ll never let us go, for two reasons.” He ticked them off on his fingers. “One, there’s too much money involved, and two, it would set a bad precedent. They got some girls from the Ukraine. What about them? Don’t you think they’d like to take a walk, too?”

  “Okay,” I said. “So your answer is that you’re gonna stand there on that corner all lovelorn and shit? And you couldn’t stick out any more if you wore a cowboy hat and a pair of shitkickers, for crissake. And just in case they don’t notice you, honky, you got your goddamn motorcycle parked right there on the avenue. Why don’t you just wear a sign?”

  “Doesn’t a person have a right to fall in love?” he said, indignant. “Isn’t this still America? Don’t I have a right to stand where I want?”

  “Yeah, okay, sure. Your South Carolina is showing. You’re in Alphabet City, dumbass. They’ll kill her. Or worse, they’ll sell her. You ever consider that possibility?” From the look on his face it was clear that he hadn’t. “Six months on the street in Juarez, or some other garden spot, her own mother wouldn’t recognize her.”

  “Aniri has a plan,” he said stubbornly. “She said she had something figured out, but she wouldn’t tell me what it was. And I trust her.”

  “Great. Does that make her the one with the brains? She the member of this collective that’s in charge of thinking? I hope so, buddy, because I don’t see much sign of it coming out of you.”

  He ground his teeth. “You work with them, don’t you. They sent you out here to scare me off. I’ll kill ’em all, you tell them that for me. They hurt Aniri and I swear to God I will blow away every swinging dick in that place, I don’t care. The Worm, those two Chinese assholes, the white guy who comes for the money, and you, too.”

  Paranoia. It was good to see, actually, because maybe it meant he wasn’t as stupid as he looked. “I do not work for anyone at Los Paraíso.”

  “Who, then?” he demanded.

  “Melanie Wing,” I said. “Someone at Los Paraíso killed her, and they dumped her body in the river.”

  Corey went a little pale. “Don’t know her,” he said, after a minute. “You sure of this?”

  I had to admit it. “No.”

  “Well then, you got a problem, don’t you.” He turned and headed back to his corner.

  “Hey, kid.” He stopped and looked at me. “At least move the bike. I mean, show a little effort, for crissake.”

  He turned and stalked away. Guess my bedside manner needed work.

  Sometimes you get a feeling that you’re riding too high, that the situation you’re in is inherently unstable and that far below you something has begun to crack, which ought to tell you to start looking for a soft place to fall. Either that, or find an exit door. Avenue C and Tenth had started to look like that, every time I showed up. Funny, how something can go along for years, everybody thinks it’s permanent, and then suddenly you realize that there ain’t enough air in the balloon anymore, and down she comes. I watched Aniri’s boyfriend as he stomped back up the avenue. Kid surprised me, though, got on his bike and rode away.

  A black gypsy cab pulled up to the curb and two guys got out. One of them was Sal Edwards, the cop who had arrested me at Annabel’s, and the other one was a fat white guy who looked and dressed like a used furniture salesman.

  “Mr. Fowler,” Edwards said. “So nice to see you. Could we have a word?”

  “Do I have a choice?”

  “Yeah,” the fat guy said. “I could sit on you right here while Sal goes to get a warrant, but you don’t want that, do you?”

  “I get the picture.”

  We sat down at a table in a dark bar over on First Avenue. I didn’t know if it was a cop bar or a wino bar, it was early enough for the place to be empty, and what distinctions there are between the two are probably too subtle for me. Sal and his portly friend drank something imported and I settled for coffee, which was pretty horrible.

  Sal had notes and he took me back over everything that had happened on the day Annabel got killed. We went over it several times, from her call to my cell, through my stopover at Klaudia’s apartment, right up to the moment he arrested me. Sal had done some homework, he had the exact time of the phone call from the cell company, statements from the cabdrivers who’d taken me to and from Klaudia’s, and he even had the transaction time from the liquor store where I’d bought Annabel’s peace offering. He grilled me over and over
about everything I remembered from that morning, what I had for breakfast, the appearance of the cabdrivers, and the time I spent with Klaudia. I drew the line there, though. If Klaudia wanted to tell him how we passed the time it was her business, but he wasn’t going to hear about it from me.

  “Well,” he finally said, flipping his notebook shut. “I could get past all of it, even the cabdriver who remembers you because of the sixteen-dollar tip, but I can’t get past Livatov. Time of death, you were with her inside her apartment, so she says, and I can’t shake her. Wasn’t for the fact she bushwhacked you that morning, you’d be on your way upstate. I guess that means you owe the lady something.”

  “You sound disappointed.”

  “I am,” he said. “My job is to put miscreants such as yourself away.”

  “So much for truth, justice, and the American way.”

  “Listen,” he said. “Truth is for philosophers. It’s like my old man used to say, maybe you didn’t do what I’m gonna beat you for, but you done something I didn’t catch you at, you deserve it and you know it. You’re dirty, Fowler, the hair on the back of my neck tells me so.”

  “Isn’t your hair ever wrong?”

  “Rarely,” he said. He drained what was left of his beer and pushed his chair back. “I gotta piss.”

  The fat cop watched Edwards walk away, and then he looked at my coffee cup. “You got a problem with the booze?”

  “Not as long as I don’t touch it,” I told him.

  He nodded. “Scanlon,” he said. “Vice. I asked Edwards if I could tag along. I had a talk with Frank O’Neill. He told me why you’re here.”

  “O’Neill. Retired cop, does real estate now. He a friend of yours?”

  “Moneybags? No, but I used to work with him. That place on Tenth, where your sister used to work. What do you have on it?”

  I looked at Scanlon and the hairs on the back of my neck started tingling. Call it instinct, call it prejudice, whatever, but something told me Scanlon wasn’t one hundred percent. And one of my wandering brain cells must have bumped up against another one. I was, all of a sudden, pissed at myself for being so slow. “Vice, you said.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I know where there’s a shopping bag full of nice dirty money, the kind that’s got no memory and no conscience.” Maybe it had taken me too long to figure it out, but I had it now, and the next steps seemed obvious. “The shopping bag is sitting on top of an old safe that’s full of the same stuff.” I had Scanlon’s complete attention. “And there’s probably a lot more where that came from. You ever hear of a guy they call El Tuerto?”

  “The twisted man,” Scanlon said. “Could be anybody.”

  “The twisted man ain’t just anybody. It’s one specific guy.”

  “I assume the money you were just talking about belongs to him.”

  “He might think it does, but I’m thinking it probably needs a new daddy. I got a few things I gotta take care of. This could turn out to be a very sweet deal. Can you give me another day or two? And are you willing to do what needs to be done?”

  “Here’s my number,” he said. “I’m your man.”

  I bought an old Toyota Corolla. Thing had a million miles on the clock and there was a hole in the dashboard where the radio used to be but it looked okay if you didn’t get too close. It ran okay, too, although it shivered like a dog too long in cold water if you went much over seventy, it smoked a bit when you first cranked it up, plus the tires weren’t great, but I figured no bad guy in New York City would ever get caught dead driving it, which meant, nobody I had to deal with would look at it twice. The price was right, not that it mattered, and I planned to dump it long before the temporary tags ran out. The first time I drove it I was pretty worried because Peter Kwok’s driver went a little faster than the Corolla really wanted to follow, but after a while I quit worrying. Freakin’ Corolla would probably keep going long after I was dead, as long as someone thought to put a little oil in it once in a while.

  Kwok lived in Westchester, about an hour north of the city. Surprised me, really, I had him figured for a Trump Tower kind of douchebag. His house was beautiful, though, an old stone farmhouse out in the woods, historic as hell, George Washington would have had no problem crashing there if he’d ever been in the neighborhood. It had a three-car garage styled to match the house, with three cars in it, one of them a Morgan three-wheeler that gave me a serious case of lust. After I followed Kwok there the first night I went back twice to scope the place. The first time there was a car in the driveway, sign on the car door said Handimaids, and I had to wait for them to leave, which cut my margin a little close. The second time the place was all mine, I had plenty of time to handle the alarms, set up my entry point, and do all my other due diligence. The toughest part of the whole exercise was finding a place to stash the Corolla while I was inside. I wound up parking in the grass behind the garage. You couldn’t see it from the house unless you were looking for it. Kwok had the kind of perimeter lighting that goes on by itself when you got too close, but that stuff isn’t much use after you’ve taken the bulbs out and chucked them in the woods. I spent the better part of the afternoon going through the place. Old habits, maybe, or idle curiosity. The guy had an amazing porn collection, and he had a lot of weapons. Guns, knives, and two baseball bats. I policed up all the ordinance and stashed most of it where Kwok wouldn’t find it in a hurry, but I left the porn where it was.

  I hung around until I saw lights in the driveway around nine that night. I watched from an upstairs window as Kwok and a woman got out of the back of the car. The driver stayed put until I heard the front door open, then he reversed back down the driveway and took off. After some murmured conversation, Kwok came upstairs and took a shower while the woman waited for him in the entryway downstairs.

  He was naked when he came out of the master bath. The GI Joe haircut was the only macho thing he still had going, the dude was fat, his arms were flabby, and he was basically hairless. I was sitting on his bed; me and the goonas were all laughing our asses off, I don’t think he noticed me until the flash from my cell phone camera lit him up, and even then I’m not sure the light was good enough for him to tell who I was. “Goddammit!” He wasn’t too loud at first but he built up volume as he went, inhaling more air than he needed, puffing himself up like a blowfish. “Do you know who I am? Do you have any idea the kind of shit you just bought? What the fuck are you . . .”

  I racked the slide on the Colt 9mm I’d found in his desk drawer. “Wow,” I told him. “You got the tiniest schwantz I ever seen. Now I know why you’re so pissed off all the time.”

  “What the fuck are you doing in my house?” he screamed at me, his big belly shaking. “I’ll show you what I got, you fucking—”

  I fired a round into the floor between his feet. He jumped and fell over backward. I got off the bed and walked over, pointing his gun at him. “Now that’s what you call a dinkie.”

  “Shut up!” he screamed. “Shut the fuck up!”

  I squatted down so that I was at eye level with him. I pointed the gun at his face. His meager chest heaved and his belly shook as he fought for breath, and for self-control. “Do it,” he finally said. “See if I give a fuck. Get it over with.”

  “It’s a thought,” I told him. “But I didn’t really come here for that.”

  “How much is he paying you?”

  “Who?”

  “Li fucking Fat!” He practically spat the name at me. “You won’t live to spend the money, you realize that, don’t you? You fell for his crazy grandfather act, and you probably won’t figure him out until he chops you into little pieces and feeds you to the sharks somewhere off Montauk, you fucking piece of shit . . .”

  “I don’t work for Li Fat.”

  He leaned back on his elbows, his legs splayed wide, fat guy style. His belly sort of flattened out and his little wee-wee pointed at the ceiling. “Who, then?”

  “I am here on behalf of Melanie Wing.”


  The air went out of him and he shook his head. “You fucking dope,” he said. “The fuck you want from me? I already told you, I got no time for that shit.”

  “I’ll tell you what, Kwok. Gimme something. You give me something, I’ll give you something.”

  “What you got for me?” he sneered.

  “You first,” I told him.

  He gritted his teeth, then spoke slowly, like he was talking to an idiot. “On my mother’s grave,” he said. “Her name never one time left my lips. I don’t think I ever seen the girl. I don’t care about Melanie Wing, alive or dead, and I never did.”

  He stared at me while I thought it over. “Why the picture,” he finally said.

  “The picture is so I don’t have to kill you,” I told him. “See, all those people jumping off your bandwagon, I think they’re making a mistake. I think you’re a survivor. Okay, you had a run of bad luck, but I don’t see you going down this easy. But if the picture comes out . . . Everybody laughing at you? Calling you Shorty behind your back? Nobody could survive that, not in your business. You can survive everything but disrespect.”

  Kwok’s expression was a mixture of contempt and fear. Mostly contempt. “You said you had something for me.”

  “You didn’t give me all that much, apart from your solemn oath.” I paused long enough for him to figure out how much I thought of that. “But I’ll give you some of what I got. That sound fair? Two of your meatballs are jumping the fence.”

  His face flushed a deep red. “That fucking Li Fat . . .”

  I shook my head. “Li Fat is not your problem. Two of your guys are freelancing. They moved uptown.” Melanie had been murdered a little over six months prior, and the operation at the Hotel Los Paraíso had been in full swing by then. “I’m guessing they been running their sideline for at least a year, maybe longer. My connection says their operation is probably clearing two million a year, and I’ll bet you this pistol right here that you ain’t seen dollar one out of it.”