Dead Cat Bounce

by Norman Green

  He watched the people come and go, went into the convenience store, bought the New York papers, sat in his car and read them twice, used the bathroom in the donut shop. He played a game with himself, tried to guess what the operators of Perfect Angels would look like. He put his money on a tired-looking guy in a brown suit and scuffed shoes, lost when the guy went inside and the windows for P.A. Inc. stayed dark.

  They showed up shortly after noon. Made sense, Stoney thought, the escort business being a nighttime enterprise. They drove up in a shiny new black GMC pickup truck, a four-door, four-wheel-drive monster with dual rear wheels, tinted windows, and what looked like every conceivable option bolted to it. It took two parking spots end to end to contain the thing, if the guy had used one space, the truck’s ass would have protruded far out into the lane behind it.

  The driver stood about six inches over six feet, he was overweight, probably went about three hundred fifty pounds, had tattoos on his forearms. He carried his extra weight well, though, didn’t waddle the way a lot of fat guys do when he crossed the parking lot. The guy riding shotgun was younger, thinner, and in better shape, wore cowboy boots, jeans, shades, and a wife-beater under a leather jacket. It seemed to Stoney that there was a bit of extra bulk under the left arm of the jacket. One young guy, Stoney thought, carrying, probably makes his living with his hands, and an older guy, might be past his prime, but you never knew. Guy like that might be able to dance with you for about forty-five seconds, he might even make your day if he got lucky. He picked up his cell phone and dialed Fat Tommy’s number.

  Fat Tommy always answered the phone in the same distinct way. “Yello?”

  “Hey, Tommy.”

  “Stoney. Whattayoudo?”

  “Something I wanna take care of, over in Jersey, and I might need somebody to hold my jacket. You busy? Spare me a couple hours?”

  “On my way,” Tommy said.

  It would take Tommy, generally a deliberate driver, at least an hour to drive from his garage in SoHo out to Lodi, New Jersey. Stoney sat and watched the people come and go, wondering who they were, what kind of lives they led, what made them choose to make their homes in this particular piece of the world. Then again, he lived in the hive of Manhattan’s Lower East Side, had never in his life lived more than twenty miles from Columbus Circle, and could not really explain why. It was a fantasy he often entertained, though, this idea of striking out for someplace new, leaving his problems and obligations behind, reinventing himself as a new man unencumbered by reputation and history. It couldn’t be what he really wanted, though, could it? He was still here, after all.

  He watched a woman walk diagonally across the parking lot. She didn’t look like she belonged among the suburban women who had been coming and going all morning long. She was thinner than most of them, and her blond hair was a little too blond, her lips a little too red, her nails a little too long. Plenty of parking spots, Stoney thought, but she didn’t drive in here, she walked. Must have taken the bus. Public transportation in New Jersey is about as popular as herpes….

  She stood next to the door that led to the upper floors and examined her reflection in one of the big glass storefronts. Stoney watched her try to throw off her fatigue, square her shoulders, stick her chest out. She must be interviewing, he thought, and she’s not going for secretary, either. She’s gonna go up and talk to that fat slob with the pickup truck. She wants to be an escort.

  She was still inside when Tommy’s Mercedes eased into the lot and parked about six spots away. Tommy emerged from the car, walked over casually, and got into the passenger side of Stoney’s Lexus. “Thanks for coming out,” Stoney said.

  Tommy nodded. “What’s the drill?”

  “You see that broken window on the second floor over there? Above the nail salon, couple of windows to the left.”

  Tommy peered at the building. “Got it.”

  “All right. The windows just to the left of the broken one belong to a place called Perfect Angels. I want to clear up a misunderstanding between me and the guy running it.”

  “Okay.” Fat Tommy did not ask for explanations. “What’sa the inside look like?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve never been up there.”

  “I see.” Tommy glanced over at him. “And the, ahh, gentleman inside, he gonna go home inna box?”

  “I don’t think that will be necessary. I think he and I can arrive at an understanding.”

  “That’sa nice.” Tommy glanced over again. “How urgent is this? We have time to take a nice look uppastairs? You don’ gonna like it, you go in there and get a surprise.”

  “We might not have to do a recon.” He told Tommy about the blond.

  “Okay, good,” Tommy said. “I gonna talka to her. You stay here, nice, quiet. I get her settled down, nice, nice, then I gonna call you.”

  It was annoying to admit it, but Tommy was right, he’d do a much better job with the woman than Stoney. “All right.”

  “What happen with that guy?” Tommy leaned back in the passenger seat. “You hear from that private cop you wasa hire?”

  “I found out a couple of things,” Stoney told him.

  “What?”

  Stoney reached into his backseat, fished out the pile of paperwork that constituted everything the two investigators had given him on Prior. He didn’t bother to edit out Marisa’s pictures.

  Fat Tommy paged through, reading quickly. It didn’t take him long to see the shape of things. “Poor Marisa,” he said.

  “Poor Marisa?” Stoney stared at him, incredulous. “Poor Marisa? She’s the one got all this shit started to begin with.”

  “C’mon, Stoney. Think about—”

  “That’s all I been doing, Tommy, and let me tell you, it ain’t helping.”

  “Not like that, Stoney. Listen, not easy to be a woman. You wake up one day, still just a girl, and you realize that you carry a loaded weapon with you everywhere you go. Point it at a man, shake the trigger, bang, down he goes, all fucked up inna head. How she suppose to learn how to use? And now she got this guy, sneak around, hide inna bush, call onna phone…And who’s she suppose to tell? Her mother? You? Goddam, she tell you the truth, you gonna go off like a cannon. She gonna be very scare, right about now.”

  “She ought to be fucking scared.”

  “Easy, Stoney. Remember what it was like, you were seventeen.”

  “I know, Tommy. I’m trying.”

  “Of course. Anyhow, maybe we still gonna find out something about Prior. Jack Harman is still looking into him.”

  “Hope you told him to watch his ass.”

  “Naturally.”

  “How far you trust this guy Harman? Something about him makes me a little nervous.”

  Tommy shrugged. “I trust him to be what he is. Listen, you go to the doctor, you don’t worry about his character, you just pay for what he’sa have between the ears. That’s whatta we do with Jack. Don’ worry, everything gonna come good. So tell me, where is Marisa right now?”

  “I got Tuco tailing her.”

  Tommy nodded, relieved. “All right,” Tommy said. “Everything gonna come together, you watch.. That woman, just come out over there. She your girl?”

  “Yeah, that’s her.”

  “Okay.” Tommy opened his door. “Gimme five, ten minute. I gonna call you.”

  Tommy had her settled in a booth at a little breakfast joint about two blocks away. She had looked nice from across the parking lot, but up close, she was stunning. She could have been anything from sixteen to twenty-five, and when she turned and looked at Stoney, the rest of the room seemed to go dark. The only thing was, her blue eyes were set just a little too close together in her face; it gave Stoney the impression that she might not be the most intellectually gifted female he’d ever met. Tommy slid over in the booth so that Stoney could sit next to him. He doesn’t want me to box her in, Stoney thought. He’s making her comfortable. He sat down, cramming Tommy into the corner.

  “Stoney, me
et Tiffany.”

  “Hello, Tiffany.” Stoney held out a hand. She looked at it before reaching out with hers.

  “Hi.”

  “You maybe recognize Tiffany’s face,” Tommy said. “She used to be a model.”

  She smiled at Tommy, then glanced over at Stoney. “Long time ago,” she said.

  “You don’t look old enough for long time ago,” Stoney said. “You really wanna work for that fat fucking slob?” Tommy sighed, closed his eyes, pinched the bridge of his nose.

  “I need the money,” Tiffany said, looking down into her lap. “I’m trying to get out of hock. I want to be a good mom to my daughter, she’s five, and she has special needs.” She clamped her lips together, biting down hard on whatever she was feeling. She looked up at Tommy. “I never hadda worry about money before. But I’m trying to make it on my own. I’m sick of always having some guy pay my way.” Tommy nodded, reached across the table, and took one of her hands in his. Stoney watched the muscles in the side of her jaw working. “I go to school in the mornings,” she said, a touch of defiance in her voice. “I’m learning to be a seamstress.” She glanced over at Stoney. “I know it isn’t rocket science, okay, but I’m doing good, and I think I can get a real job when I graduate. But I still got bills in the meantime. Tuition isn’t free.”

  “I didn’t mean anything bad, Tiffany,” Stoney said. “I apologize. It’s just that this guy seems like a scumbag, you ask me.”

  She pulled her hand out of Tommy’s. “Fuckin’ cheesedick bastard,” she said. “I fuckin’ hate him. But if he’d put me on for a lousy six months, and didn’t tell my parole officer, I could finish school, I could get my daughter back, and I could finally get clear of this fuckin’ shit.” Her face was angry and hard. “He made me blow him,” she said coldly, staring at Stoney. “He made me suck his cock, and then he told me to call back next week, and he might have something for me. Might.” She was clearly furious. There was a clear space of silence all around them in the little restaurant.

  “I can’t believe it,” Stoney said. “You gotta be kidding me, with your looks, how come he didn’t grab you?”

  “Because he knows I’m in trouble,” she said.

  Stoney played a hunch. “How long you been clean?”

  She stared at him, her mouth open. “Jesus, is it that obvious?”

  “Probably not,” he said. “I got eight months.”

  “I got four,” she said. “Welcome to the real world, right? My parents tossed me when I got out of rehab, and the state took my daughter. I can’t get her back unless I have a job and a stable address, and I can’t get a job because of my record. My sister’s letting me sleep on her couch. If it wasn’t for her…Everybody keeps telling me it’ll get better, but I gotta tell ya, it ain’t happened yet. Even that fat fuck at Perfect Angels is waiting to see how hard he can squeeze me.”

  “What’s the guy’s name?” Stoney asked her.

  “Dylan,” she said.

  “Thomas or Zimmerman, do you suppose?” Tommy muttered.

  “I don’t know his last name,” she said. “It’s probably just some shit he made up, anyhow.”

  “Tiffany, what’s your daughter’s name?” Stoney asked.

  “Sarah,” she said. “It was my grandmother’s name.” And then, with a squeak in her voice, “Would you like to see her picture?”

  “Yeah.” Tiffany pursed her lips and swallowed while she dug out a wallet and extracted a picture. The little girl resembled Tiffany, but she carried the unmistakable stamp of Down’s syndrome on her face. Stoney looked at it and handed the picture back. “She’s beautiful.”

  “Thank you.” She stowed it away again. “I gotta get her back. You know what I mean? I gotta.”

  “I know what you mean. Where’s her father?”

  “My stepfather, you mean? Who the hell knows.”

  “You’re kidding me.”

  “I was sixteen. He’s not the present one, he was the one before this. I actually thought…I thought I liked him.”

  “Nobody can do it to you like your family,” Stoney said. “But if you stay clean, I promise you, a year from now you won’t even remember what this felt like.”

  She nodded. “I keep hoping.”

  Fat Tommy cleared his throat. “Tiffany,” he asked her, “how about the other guy in that place? You remember his name?”

  “Carlo,” she said. “Carlo Innocenti.”

  Tommy looked over at Stoney. “Related, you suppose?” Carlo Innocenti was a prominent crime figure in New Jersey, not well known to the general public, but still prominent. The Carlo Innocenti that Tommy and Stoney knew about, however, was in his early seventies.

  “Gotta be,” Stoney said. “This kid’s probably a grandson or something.”

  “That gonna be a problem?”

  Stoney shook his head. “Nah. I don’t think so. No way the old man knows the kid is doing this.” He’d never let one of his own grow up to be a pimp, Stoney thought. He almost said it, but he looked across the booth into the pinched face and watery eyes of the woman sitting there and reconsidered. “The kid’s got to be doing this on his own. Carlo will think we did him a favor. Anyway, it’s the other guy I want. I wanna break it off in his ass.”

  Tiffany cleared her throat. “Do you really? ’Cause I have a friend who’d like that, too. His name is Jason.”

  Stoney walked Tiffany out to her bus stop. He took some money out of his pocket, counted off a hundred for himself, and handed the rest to her. “Thank you for your trouble,” he said. “Ain’t none of my business, but you could go do something else for six months. Waitress, receptionist, anything. I bet lots of places would love to have you.”

  She looked down at the money in her hand. “You’d lose your bet,” she said. “It’s too easy to do background checks, twelve bucks on the Internet and they’ve got your whole life. Even the freakin’ diners check you out six ways to Sunday before they hire you.”

  “Be creative,” he told her. “Make up a new name. Keep trying.”

  “Yeah, all right.” She salted the money away, then looked up at him. “I tell you what,” she said. “You promise me you won’t wimp out when Jason gets here, okay, and I’ll apply for a bunch more waitress jobs.”

  “You really do hate this guy, don’t you?”

  “You damn right I hate him.”

  “All right, it’s a deal. You can check with Jason, later.”

  “Okay,” she said. “I will.” She grinned, her smile made beautiful by the touch of evil in it. “Wish I could stay to watch,” she said. “That fat bastard really has it coming.”

  “Good luck.” He didn’t know what else to say, so he walked away, left her standing on the corner.

  Tiffany had given them the layout before she left. The place consisted of an inner and an outer room. Dylan, the fat guy, took care of business from behind a desk in the inner office. Carlo Innocenti spent most of his time watching television in the outer office. He was sprawled on the couch with his boots up on a low coffee table watching a black-and-white cowboy movie on AMC when Stoney eased through the outer door. Carlo didn’t look up right away, and when he did, it was too late. Stoney, six inches taller than Innocenti and a good hundred pounds of muscle heavier, sat down right next to Innocenti, a finger to his lips. He draped an arm over the kid’s shoulders as Carlo put his boots down on the floor. Innocenti didn’t have a chance, and the look on his face said he knew it.

  “Shhh,” Stoney whispered, and he reached across Carlo’s body and relieved him of his pistol. He stood up, then, and backed slowly toward the door, motioning Carlo to follow him. Carlo stood up, looking like he didn’t know what to do with his hands, and glanced uncertainly over at the inner door, the one that led to the inner office.

  Stoney shook his head. “Be smart, Carlo,” he whispered. The younger man swallowed once, then followed Stoney through the outer door into the hallway. He froze when he saw Fat Tommy leaning against the opposite wall.

  �
�Carlo,” Tommy said, his voice low and sad. “Carlo. What’sa your momma gonna say when she find out you’re understudy to a fucking pimp?”

  “Did my father send you guys?” Carlo looked from one face to the other, fear plain in his eyes. “Anyhow, I ain’t studyin’ shit, I swear, I just work for the fuckin’ guy.” His voice was rising, tinged with a note of panic. Stoney held a finger back to his lips. “Sorry,” Carlo said. “Listen, guys, my parents think I’m still going to Bergen Community. When they find out I dropped out again they’re gonna kill me. Did my father send you, for real?”

  Fat Tommy smiled. “Let’s just say, friend of a friend. You understand? Somebody wanna give you one more chance to do the right thing.”

  “Oh, shit,” Carlo exhaled, kicking at the carpet. “Oh, Jesus Christ.”

  “Not everyone gets a second chance, Carlo,” Stoney said. “You still got a shot to pull this out. My friend here is gonna give you a ride home. But listen to me, okay? Tell your parents the truth. Things might not go this easy, next time around.”

  Carlo, looking at the floor, nodded his head. His hands were trembling slightly. Kid’s old man is probably gonna beat the crap out of him, Stoney thought. Might be just what he needs, anyhow. Carlo glanced back at the office door. “What about Dylan?”

  “Don’t you worry about him,” Stoney said. “You got your own problems.”

  Fat Tommy stepped up close to whisper in Stoney’s ear. “You want me to put this kid in a taxi? I could be back here in ten minutes.”

  “No. You better check in on Harman, find out if he’s getting anywhere. I got this motherfucker. Call me later on and let me know how things went.”

  “I will.”

  He had taken to wearing running shoes since he’d moved back into the city, so he didn’t make a sound as he slipped back into the outer office of P.A. Inc. He could feel his heartbeat accelerating, his body getting ready for what was to come. But I don’t even know what I’m gonna do yet, he thought. He stared at the door to Dylan’s office. Benny told you you’d know, he told himself, so just go with that. He opened the door and stepped through.