Manhattan Noir

by Lawrence Block

  Ricky shook his head again. He sighed. “Got half a mind to go to Buffalo and take his black ass out myself.”

  “You the man, Lime Rickey. You the fucking man.” And T.G. started rambling once again.

  Nodding, staring at T.G.’s not-drunk, not-sober eyes, Ricky was wondering: How much would it take to get the fuck out of Hell’s Kitchen? Get away from the bitching ex-wives, the bratty kid, away from T.G. and all the asshole losers like him. Maybe go to Florida, where Gardino was from. Maybe that’d be the place for him. From the various scams he and T.G. put together, he’d saved up about thirty thousand in cash. Nothing shabby there. But man, if he conned just two or three guys in the boat deal, he could walk away with five times that.

  Wouldn’t set him for good, but it’d be a start. Hell, Florida was full of rich old people, most of ’em stupid, just waiting to give their money to a player had the right grift.

  A fist colliding with his arm shattered the daydream. He bit the inside of his cheek and winced. He glared at T.G., who just laughed. “So, Lime Rickey, you going to Leon’s, ain’t you? On Saturday.”

  “I don’t know.”

  The door swung open and some out-of-towner wandered in. An older guy, in his fifties, dressed in beltless tan slacks, a white shirt, and a blue blazer, a cord around his neck holding a convention badge, AOFM, whatever that was.

  Association of … Ricky squinted. Association of Obese Ferret Molesters.

  He laughed at his own joke. Nobody noticed. Ricky eyed the tourist. This never used to happen, seeing geeks in a bar around here. But then the convention center went in a few blocks south and after that, Times Square got its balls cut off and turned into Disneyland. Suddenly Hell’s Kitchen was White Plains and Paramus, and the fucking yuppies and tourists took over.

  The man blinked, eyes getting used to the dark. He ordered wine—T.G. snickered, wine in this place?—and drank down half right away. The guy had to’ve had money. He was wearing a Rolex and his clothes were designer shit. The man looked around slowly, and it reminded Ricky of the way people at the zoo look at the animals. He got pissed and enjoyed a brief fantasy of dragging the guy’s ass outside and pounding him till he gave up the watch and wallet.

  But of course he wouldn’t. T.G. and Ricky weren’t that way; they steered clear of busting heads. Oh, a few times somebody got fucked up bad—they’d pounded a college kid when he’d taken a swing at T.G. during a scam, and Ricky’d slashed the face of some spic who’d skimmed a thousand bucks of their money. But the rule was, you didn’t make people bleed if you could avoid it. If a mark lost only money, a lot of times he’d keep quiet about it, rather than go public and look like a fucking idiot. But if he got hurt, more times than not he’d go to the cops.

  “You with me, Lime Rickey?” T.G. snapped. “You’re off in your own fucking world.”

  “Just thinking.”

  “Ah, thinking. Good. He’s thinking. ’Bout your altar bitch?”

  Ricky mimicked jerking off. Putting himself down again. Wondered why he did that. He glanced at the tourist. The man was whispering to the bartender, who caught Ricky’s eye and lifted his head. Ricky pushed back from T.G.’s table and walked to the bar, his boots making loud clonks on the wooden floor.

  “Whassup?”

  “This guy’s from out of town.”

  The tourist looked at Ricky once, then down at the floor.

  “No shit.” Ricky rolled his eyes at the bartender.

  “Iowa,” the man said.

  Where the fuck was Iowa? Ricky’d come close to finishing high school and had done okay in some subjects, but geography had bored him crazy and he never paid any attention in class.

  The bartender said, “He was telling me he’s in town for a conference at Javits.”

  Him and the ferret molesters …

  “And …” the bartender’s voice faded as he glanced at the tourist. “Well, why don’t you tell him?”

  The man took another gulp of his wine. Ricky looked at his hand. Not only a Rolex, but a gold pinky ring with a big honking diamond in it.

  “Yeah, why don’t you tell me?”

  The tourist did—in a halting whisper.

  Ricky listened to his words. When the old guy was through, Ricky smiled and said, “This is your lucky day, mister.”

  Thinking: Mine too.

  A half hour later, Ricky and the tourist from Iowa were standing in the grimy lobby of the Bradford Arms, next to a warehouse at Eleventh Avenue and 50th Street.

  Ricky was making introductions. “This’s Darla.”

  “Hello, Darla.”

  A gold tooth shone like a star out of Darla’s big smile. “How you doing, honey? What’s yo’ name?”

  “Uhm, Jack.”

  Ricky sensed he’d nearly made up “John” instead, which would’ve been pretty funny, under the circumstances.

  “Nice to meet you, Jack.” Darla, whose real name was Sha’quette Greeley, was six feet tall, beautiful, and built like a runway model. She’d also been a man until three years ago. The tourist from Iowa didn’t catch on to this, or maybe he did and it turned him on. Anyway, his gaze was lapping her body like a tongue.

  Jack checked them in, paying for three hours in advance.

  Three hours? thought Ricky. An old fart like this? God bless him.

  “Y’all have fun now,” Ricky said, falling into a redneck accent. He’d decided that Iowa was probably somewhere in the south.

  Detective Robert Schaeffer could’ve been the host on one of those FOX or A&E cop shows. He was tall, silver-haired, good-looking, maybe a bit long in the face. He’d been an NYPD detective for nearly twenty years.

  Schaeffer and his partner were walking down a filthy hallway that stank of sweat and Lysol. The partner pointed to a door, whispering, “That’s it.” He pulled out what looked like an electronic stethoscope and placed the sensor over the scabby wood.

  “Hear anything?” Schaeffer asked, also in a soft voice.

  Joey Bernbaum, the partner, nodded slowly, holding up a finger. Meaning wait.

  And then a nod. “Go.”

  Schaeffer pulled a master key out of his pocket, and drawing his gun, unlocked the door then pushed inside.

  “Police! Nobody move!”

  Bernbaum followed, his own automatic in hand.

  The faces of the two people inside registered identical expressions of shock at the abrupt entry, though it was only in the face of the pudgy middle-aged white man, sitting shirtless on the bed, that the shock turned instantly to horror and dismay. He had a Marine Corps tattoo on his fat upper arm and had probably been pretty tough in his day, but now his narrow, pale shoulders slumped and he looked like he was going to cry. “No, no, no …”

  “Oh, fuck,” Darla said.

  “Stay right where you are, sweetheart. Be quiet.”

  “How the fuck you find me? That little prick downstairs at the desk, he dime me? I know it. I’ma pee on that boy next time I see him. I’ma—”

  “You’re not going to do anything but shut up,” Bernbaum snapped. In a ghetto accent he added a sarcastic, “Yo, got that, girlfriend?”

  “Man oh man.” Darla tried to wither him with a gaze. He just laughed and cuffed her.

  Schaeffer put his gun away and said to the man, “Let me see some ID.”

  “Oh, please, officer, look, I didn’t—”

  “Some ID?” Schaeffer said. He was polite, like always. When you had a badge in your pocket and a big fucking pistol on your hip you could afford to be civil.

  The man dug his thick wallet out of his slacks and handed it to the officer, who read the license. “Mr. Shelby, this your current address? In Des Moines?”

  In a quivering voice, he said, “Yessir.”

  “All right, well, you’re under arrest for solicitation of prostitution.” He took his cuffs out of their holder.

  “I didn’t do anything illegal, really. It was just … It was only a date.”

  “Really? Then what’s this?”
The detective picked up a stack of money sitting on the cockeyed nightstand. Four hundred bucks.

  “I—I just thought …”

  The old guy’s mind was working fast, that was obvious. Schaeffer wondered what excuse he’d come up with. He’d heard them all.

  “Just to get some food and something to drink.”

  That was a new one. Schaeffer tried not to laugh. You spend four hundred bucks on food and booze in this neighborhood, you could afford a block party big enough for fifty Darlas.

  “He pay you to have sex?” Schaeffer asked Darla.

  She grimaced.

  “You lie, baby, you know what’ll happen to you. You’re honest with me, I’ll put in a word.”

  “You a prick too,” she snapped. “All right, he pay me to do a round-the-world.”

  “No …” Shelby protested for a moment but then he gave up and slumped even lower. “Oh, Christ, what’m I gonna do? This’ll kill my wife … and my kids …” He looked up with panicked eyes. “Will I have to go to jail?”

  “That’s up to the prosecutor and the judge.”

  “Why the hell’d I do this?” he moaned.

  Schaeffer looked him over carefully. After a long moment he said, “Take her downstairs.”

  Darla snapped, “Yo, you fat fuck, keep yo’ motherfuckin’ hands offa me.”

  Bernbaum laughed again. “This mean you ain’t my girlfriend no more?” He gripped her by the arm and led her outside. The door swung shut.

  “Look, detective, it’s not like I robbed anybody. It was harmless. You know, victimless.”

  “It’s still a crime. And don’t you know about AIDS, hepatitis?”

  Shelby looked down again. He nodded. “Yessir,” he whispered.

  Still holding the cuffs, Schaeffer eyed the man carefully. He sat down on a creaky chair. “How often you get to town?”

  “To New York?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Once a year, if I’ve got a conference or meeting. I always enjoy it. You know what they say, ‘It’s a nice place to visit.’” His voice faded, maybe thinking that the rest of that old saw—“but you wouldn’t want to live there”—would insult the cop.

  Schaeffer asked, “So, you got a conference now?” He pulled the badge out of the man’s pocket, read it.

  “Yessir, it’s our annual trade show. At the Javits. Outdoor furniture manufacturers.”

  “That’s your line?”

  “I have a wholesale business in Iowa.”

  “Yeah? Successful?”

  “Number one in the state. Actually, in the whole region.” He said this sadly, not proudly, probably thinking of how many customers he’d lose when word got out about his arrest.

  Schaeffer nodded slowly. Finally he put the handcuffs away.

  Shelby’s eyes narrowed, watching this.

  “You ever done anything like this before?”

  A hesitation. He decided not to lie. “I have. Yessir.”

  “But I get a feeling you’re not going to again.”

  “Never. I promise you. I’ve learned my lesson.”

  There was a long pause.

  “Stand up.”

  Shelby blinked then did what he was told. He frowned as the cop patted down his trousers and jacket. With the guy not wearing a shirt, Schaeffer was ninety-nine percent sure the man was legit, but had to make absolutely certain there were no wires.

  The detective nodded toward the chair and Shelby sat down. The businessman’s eyes revealed that he now had an inkling of what was happening.

  “I have a proposition for you,” Schaeffer said.

  “Proposition?”

  The cop nodded. “Okay. I’m convinced you’re not going to do this again.”

  “Never.”

  “I could let you go with a warning. But the problem is, the situation got called in.”

  “Called in?”

  “A vice cop on the street happened to see you go into the hotel with Darla—we know all about her. He reported it and they sent me out. There’s paperwork on the incident.”

  “My name?”

  “No, just a John Doe at this point. But there is a report. I could make it go away but it’d take some work and it’d be a risk.”

  Shelby sighed, nodding with a grimace, and opened the bidding.

  It wasn’t much of an auction. Shelby kept throwing out numbers and Schaeffer kept lifting his thumb, more, more … Finally, when the shaken man hit $150,000, Schaeffer nodded.

  “Christ.”

  When T.G. and Ricky Kelleher had called to say that he’d found a tourist to scam, Ricky told him the mark could go six figures. That was so far out of those stupid micks’ league that Schaeffer had to laugh. But sure enough, he had to give the punk credit for picking out a mark with big bucks.

  In a defeated voice Shelby asked, “Can I give you a check?”

  Schaeffer laughed.

  “Okay, okay … but I’ll need a few hours.”

  “Tonight. Eight.” They arranged a place to meet. “I’ll keep your driver’s license. And the evidence.” He picked up the cash on the table. “You try to skip, I’ll put out an arrest warrant and send that to Des Moines too. They’ll extradite you and then it’ll be a serious felony. You’ll do real time.”

  “Oh, no, sir. I’ll get the money. Every penny.” Shelby hurriedly dressed.

  “Go out by the service door in back. I don’t know where the vice cop is.”

  The tourist nodded and scurried out of the room.

  In the lobby by the elevator the detective found Bernbaum and Darla sharing a smoke.

  “Where my money?” the hooker demanded.

  Schaeffer handed her two hundred of the confiscated cash. He and Bernbaum split the rest, a hundred fifty for Schaeffer, fifty for his partner.

  “You gonna take the afternoon off, girlfriend?” Bernbaum asked Darla.

  “Me? Hell no, I gots to work.” She glanced at the money Schaeffer’d given her. “Least till you assholes start paying me fo’ not fuckin’ same as I make fo’ fuckin’.”

  Schaeffer pushed into Mack’s bar, an abrupt entrance that changed the course of at least half the conversations going on inside real fast. He was a crooked cop, sure, but he was still a cop, and the talk immediately shifted from deals, scams, and drugs to sports, women, and jobs. Schaeffer laughed and strode across the room. He dropped into an empty chair at the scarred table, muttered to T.G., “Get me a beer.” Schaeffer being about the only one in the universe who could get away with that.

  When the brew came he tipped the glass to Ricky. “You caught us a good one. He agreed to a hundred fifty.”

  “No shit,” T.G. said, cocking a red eyebrow. The split was Schaeffer got half and then Ricky and T.G. divided the rest equally. “Where’s he getting it from?”

  “I dunno. His problem.”

  Ricky squinted. “Wait. I want the watch too.”

  “Watch?”

  “The old guy. He had a Rolex. I want it.”

  At home Schaeffer had a dozen Rolexes he’d taken off marks and suspects over the years. He didn’t need another one. “You want the watch, he’ll give up the watch. All he cares about is making sure his wife and his corn-pone customers don’t find out what he was up to.”

  “What’s corn-pone?” Ricky asked.

  “Hold on,” T.G. snarled. “Anybody gets the watch, it’s me.”

  “No way. I saw it first. It was me who picked him—”

  “My watch,” the fat Irishman interrupted. “Maybe he’s got a money clip or something you can have. But I get the fucking Rolex.”

  “Nobody has money clips,” Ricky argued. “I don’t even want a fucking money clip.”

  “Listen, little Lime Rickey,” T.G. muttered. “It’s mine. Read my lips.”

  “Jesus, you two are like kids,” Schaeffer said, swilling the beer. “He’ll meet us across the street from Pier 46 at 8 tonight.” The three men had done this same scam, or variations on it, for a couple of years now but still
didn’t trust each other. The deal was they all went together to collect the payoff.

  Schaeffer drained the beer. “See you boys then.”

  After the detective was gone they watched the game for a few minutes, with T.G. bullying some guys to place bets, even though it was in the fourth quarter and there was no way Chicago could come back. Finally, Ricky said, “I’m going out for a while.”

  “What, now I’m your fucking babysitter? You want to go, go.” Though he still made it sound like Ricky was a complete idiot for missing the end of game that only had eight minutes to run.

  Just as Ricky got to the door, T.G. called in a loud voice, “Hey, Lime Rickey, my Rolex? Is it gold?”

  Just to be a prick.

  Bob Schaeffer had walked a beat in his youth. He’d investigated a hundred felonies, he’d run a thousand scams in Manhattan and Brooklyn. All of which meant that he’d learned how to stay alive on the streets.

  Now, he sensed a threat.

  He was on his way to score some coke from a kid who operated out of a newsstand at Ninth and 55th, and he realized he’d been hearing the same footsteps for the past five or six minutes. A weird scraping. Somebody was tailing him. He paused to light a cigarette in a doorway and checked out the reflection in a storefront window. Sure enough, he saw a man in a cheap gray suit, wearing gloves, about thirty feet behind him. The guy paused for a moment and pretended to look into a store window.

  Schaeffer didn’t recognize the guy. He’d made a lot of enemies over the years. The fact he was a cop gave him some protection—it’s risky to gun down even a crooked one—but there were plenty of nuts jobs out there.

  Walking on. The owner of the scraping shoes continued his tail. A glance in the rearview mirror of a car parked nearby told him the man was getting closer, but his hands were at his side, not going for a weapon. Schaeffer pulled out his cell phone and pretended to make a call, to give himself an excuse to slow up and not make the guy suspicious. His other hand slipped inside his jacket and touched the grip of his chrome-plated Sig Sauer 9mm automatic pistol.