The Informant

by Marc Olden

  Bad Red said, “Computer datin’ don’t git you no dope. This man can.”

  “Maybe we ought to be talking with him instead of you.” Katey used the corner of a matchbook to pry a strand of pineapple from between two top teeth.

  Bad Red chuckled. “You ain’t ready fo’ him. He’s what you call a git-together man. Introduces you to people in Europe, top people in Paris, Marseilles, Belgium, Germany.”

  Katey smiled. “A travel agent, right?” He was baiting Bad Red, getting him to talk, to keep flapping his thick lips. Neil said nothing. Lydia took a long time to take one sip from a rum and Coke.

  “Travel agent my ass.” Bad Red had to show off now. Show and tell. Just the way Katey figured. “I’m tellin’ you, he charge a hundred thousand jes’ to introduce you to top people. Take like you got a heavy load and you can’t find you no buyers for it. Now, you sittin’ on mucho dope, no money comin’ in, and people know you got it. Maybe they tell the law, maybe they steal it. Thing is, you want to git rid of it quick. But you don’t know nobody who can buy all you got. He knows top people who buy it from you. But agin, like I say, he always charge you a hundred thousand for to introduce you to somebody.”

  “Oh, I see.” Katey rolled an unlit cigarette between his teeth. He was a good actor, like any other cop who worked vice and narcotics. You were always playing a role then. Make sure you play it like a champ.

  It’s not just who Lydia Constanza knows. It’s the people they know. Words of wisdom from Fred Praether. Maybe Lydia was righteous. Katey smiled at her, and she smiled back tentatively, nervously, blinking her eyes, then looking away. Shy little fox.

  Before Neil or Katey could say anything, two young blacks came up to the table to backslap Bad Red and clasp palms with him, the three men grinning and greeting each other warmly. Katey noticed the two young, pretty white girls who hung back, eyes on the table. Trophies for the dope dealers, because that’s what the two young blacks were. That’s what Katey’s gut feeling was telling him as he watched them whisper into Bad Red’s ear, the three of them chuckling.

  “No, man, no. Ain’t holdin’ nothin’ like that.” Bad Red chuckled louder. “You two is gettin’ in the way of business I got goin’ here.” The two young blacks looked at Neil, Katey, nodded politely. One of the blacks knew Lydia and leaned over to gently kiss her cheek.

  When the young blacks and their white women had left, Bad Red still smiled, shaking his head. “They axin’ me ’bout some cut. They lookin’ to buy four, five keys of mannite.”

  Katey said, “That means they’re holding a load or expecting to get one.”

  “Cocaine.” Bad Red sipped from his glass, eyeing the dancing crowd, one hand patting the table in rhythm to Stevie Wonder’s “Keep on Runnin’ from My Love.” “They always step on their shit with mannite ’cause it’s fluffy, puffs up the dope so it looks like you got a lot. They been buyin’ it from Puerto Rico for like seven hunnerd a key. Then they found out it only cost thirty-five a key down there, so now they lookin’ around for a better deal. Tol’ ’em I ain’t got none.” Bad Red was admitting he was a spade with limits.

  Katey finished lighting another Winston. “If we hear of anything, maybe we can help them out, and like maybe they help us out. Who do we look for?”

  “Julius Shelton and Lonnie Conquest. Two country boys from North Carolina makin’ money in the big city. You check wif me, I put you in touch with them.”

  Neil finished winding his wristwatch, and Katey nodded, letting the matter drop. Dope was a game you never rushed. People were late, sometimes they never showed at all. Sometimes you waited four hours for a contact who stood you up, never bothering to tell you why. In dope, everybody was undependable and far from trustworthy. Dope was a game for patience, cunning, cool nerves. Katey wasn’t going to press Bad Red about Julius Shelton and Lonnie Conquest, and neither was Neil, not on a first meeting.

  But they had come up with names in the night, and that was a start.

  A beautiful young white woman bent down and put both arms around Bad Red, blowing into his ear, then touching the ear with the tip of a long pink tongue. The woman was a platinum blond, wore a skintight yellow dress and gold bracelets on both biceps. Katey held his breath. Gorgeous. In her early twenties.

  Bad Red giggled, gently pushing the woman away. “Charisse, you is bad. Why you got to come on when I’m tryin’ to do business?”

  The woman stood up, and she and Katey stared at each other. Katey moved his small mouth to one side in a grin, nodding, interested. That was one of the joys of being on the force. Freebies.

  Bad Red’s eyes flicked from the woman to the cop. “Charisse here’s goin’ to Europe soon. She got her a little trick. Charisse, show my friends here what you do with a rubber band.”

  She smiled, eyes still on Katey, who chewed a corner of his mouth, never taking his eyes from her. The most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. Tall, close to five-ten Katey would say, nice tits, hair like white gold, and one hell of a delicious mouth.

  Charisse held the rubber band up in two long fingers tipped with green nail polish. Neil, Lydia, and Katey watched. Bad Red watched them. He knew all about Charisse.

  “I usually charge twenty dollars to do this trick.” Her voice was husky, as though she had a cold. It turned Katey on.

  He gave her his small smile again, but his words were aimed at Bad Red. “She worth twenty?”

  “I hear tell.”

  “Neil, you got twenty?” Let the feds pay.

  Charisse took the twenty from Neil, folded it, slipped it into a tiny flat silver purse. She dangled the rubber band on her thumb so they could all see it; then she slipped it into her mouth, moved her jaw, stood with both hands on her hips, and Katey wanted to fuck her so bad he could have climbed across the table and jumped her right there.

  Charisse took the rubber band from her mouth. It was wet, glistening with spit, and tied in a perfect bow.

  Katey snorted. “Talented, too.”

  Charisse licked her pink lips with her tongue, did it slowly, and never stopped looking at Katey.

  “No complaints so far.” That husky voice again. It was like ice scraping Katey’s spine.

  Lydia reached across the table, taking Bad Red by the wrist. She was annoyed. “That’s enough!”

  Charisse frowned, blinked. A hand went to her throat, and she flinched as though expecting to be hit.

  Lydia hissed, “Red? These people are my friends. Customers. Remember?”

  Bad Red grinned. “Yeah. Sure. I can dig it.” He looked at Charisse. “Later, baby. Later. Go on, go on. Split.”

  Charisse and Lydia glared at each other. Then the beautiful blond was gone, into the crowd. In the silence at the table, Katey knew something was wrong. Cops always know.

  Lydia said, “It’s a man. He’s going to Europe to have a sex change, and Red should have—”

  “Hey, momma, whatchu wan’ me do? I ain’t gon’ put people’s business in the street.” His grin was wide, and both palms were upturned.

  Katey, angry, humiliated, stared up at the ceiling, hearing music and conversation around him, wondering how he could be conned by a fucking drag queen. How? In this fucking darkness, there had been no way of knowing.

  He looked across the table at a still-smiling Bad Red. I owe you, jungle bunny.

  Neil, sensing what was happening, stood up, an arm around Katey.

  “Let’s split.”

  The cop didn’t move, didn’t take his eyes from Bad Red.

  “Katey?” Neil squeezed the cop’s lean shoulders.

  Katey eyed the black dealer as if staring at him through cross hairs.

  “When we get what we came for.”

  “It’s gone down already. Time to split.” Neil leaned against Katey, forcing the cop to stand up. Now was not the time to be uncool.

  Neil grinned, an arm around Katey’s shoulders, a hand raised in farewell to Bad Red. “Later.” Best get Katey outside.

  Bad Red nodded,
grinning. “Check me out agin, y’all.” Lydia kissed him on the cheek and kept smiling while pushing his hand down, keeping it from going up her dress.

  Outside, the three of them walked in the chilly October night toward Sixth Avenue. Katey, still angry at having been taken in by Bad Red and the blond drag queen, spat on someone’s car. He snorted, jamming both hands deeper into the pockets of his gray topcoat. One day, he wanted to get Bad Red in the back of a precinct house and lean on his black ass for an hour.

  Neil sighed. “It’s over, man. You ought to thank Lydia for jumping in.” He knew Katey’s pride was hurt. Macho time. Cops didn’t like being made fools of, and the way Katey had been looking at Charisse, anything could have happened.

  Katey turned to Lydia. “Thanks.” He meant it.

  The buy had gone down on the dance floor. Bad Red had slipped the package to Lydia, telling her to give him the money under the table. It had all been happening in front of Katey while he was drooling over the drag queen.

  “Trouble is,” said Neil, stopping and forcing the others to stop and listen to him, “we can’t go into court with this buy. Lydia made it, and if we do, it’ll be thrown out by the defense. Her record. Sorry, Lydia.”

  She nodded, her lower lip caught between even white teeth. “I understand. I am sorry. I could not get out of it, and if I make a fuss, if I say somethin’, maybe it all goes wrong. I had no choice, I had to do what Bad Red say.”

  Neil smiled, both hands on her shoulders. “You did fine. You were beautiful, right, Katey?”

  The cop nodded, in no mood to smile yet. “Yeah, beautiful. Fucking beautiful. Where you know Charisse from?”

  Lydia smiled. “He’s all over town, mostly at night, ’cause the light hides things, you know? Easier for him that way. He’s saving money to go to Europe for a sex change. Couple times he’s been a mule for some people. Nothing much, a key, half a key at a time. Something like that. Took his name from Cyd Charisse. When he gets a customer, he says he’s having his period and can’t do certain things, so he does it another way, you understand?”

  Katey nodded. “I understand. Thanks.”

  Lydia said, “What we do with this buy?”

  “Same thing.” Neil patted the left pocket in his topcoat “We see what the lab says. We’ve got us some names. Bad Red, we know, is dealing something. How pure it is, who knows? And Lonnie Conquest and his friend Julius and that mysterious man who charges a hundred thousand dollars to introduce people. We’ve got us some names, and we get busy on them tomorrow. Anything more from your cousin on the big one? Anything more on Cubans and blacks getting together?”

  She shrugged her shoulders, shivering with the October chill.

  “Ummmm, we only spoke once this week. He’s in Canada with his girlfriend. She’s a social worker he met in Attica.”

  “Nice,” said Katey, looking around at nothing in particular. Somehow he felt dirty. Charisse. Charisse my ass.

  Lydia continued. “My cousin’s the one who took me to the Palace, you know, where I see Kelly? He say a lot of money is changing hands for this deal. Gotta be millions. He say the money has to be up front and everybody has to pay.”

  Neil said, “He say who’s collecting?”

  Lydia nodded. “A priest. He say some priest is collecting the money.”

  “A priest?” Katey frowned, snorting. “Jesus, I’ve heard of putting something in the collection plate, but a few million? You sure about that? A priest?”

  “That’s what my cousin said. He said a priest is collecting. No name, but maybe I find out.”

  Neil said, “Appreciate it if you could, Lydia. That would help us a whole lot. Maybe it’s a nickname, some kind of alias.”

  Lydia said, “What if it’s a real priest?”

  Neil raised both eyebrows, nodding. “Never can tell. Okay, it’s late, and you’ve got to get home to Olga. Katey, grab a cab, will you?”

  Lydia sat in the back seat of the waiting cab, door open. “Uh, tonight. Does this mean I have to—” she dropped her voice, lifting her shoulders, pleading with her eyes—“go into court?”

  Neil looked at Katey. “I think we can keep you out. We made contact, we got us some more names. We might hit Bad Red again, but we can work it to keep you out, right?” Neil looked at Katey.

  “Yeah, sure.” Katey wanted a drink, wanted someplace warm, away from cold weather. He hated cold weather.

  He said, “Something else I’d sure like to keep quiet.” He looked at Neil, at Lydia.

  She said, “I understand.” A man had his pride, and a cop was even worse. If that story about Katey and the drag queen ever got out, if anybody ever heard about him and Charisse …

  The two men stood watching the taxi’s red taillights move away, seeing the cab roll off Sixth Avenue and into the darkness of Central Park.

  “She’s working, rolling over just fine.” Neil blew into his cupped hands, pleased with himself, with Lydia, with the buy. “So far, no turkey. We ain’t copped nothing bad yet.”

  Katey turned, started walking down Sixth Avenue toward Radio City. Could have been worse. He could have gone off with Charisse, and God knows what would come out of that. He shivered, and not just from the cold. You think you’ve been around, you think you know what’s going down, and then something like this happens and you’re back to feeling like a candy-ass rookie tripping over his nightstick.

  Katey needed some booze. He needed to be with somebody normal. A woman. Margaret. But it was late, past one in the morning, and Margaret was probably sleeping.

  Neil said, “I’m serious about keeping Lydia out of this one. You might have to talk to your people, okay? Explain that she—”

  “No sweat. She did me one tonight. Give her that much.” Katey wiped his dripping nose with the back of his hand. Goddamn cold weather. Shrivels your balls to the size of cornflakes and your cock down to a jelly bean.

  He stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, looked at Neil a long time before speaking. “Tits. Charisse had tits. Imagine that.”

  “Hormone shots, probably. I seem to recall he … she wasn’t wearing a bra.”

  “Yeah, well, it’s some kind of world when you can’t believe in tits anymore.” He shuddered. “Jesus, I really do need a drink. Let’s find someplace before I fucking go bananas.”

  “I won’t sleep with you, you know.” Margaret Soames, in a blue-and-white floor-length nightgown, sat on the faded yellow couch hugging herself. “Not when you come here like this.” It was almost three o’clock in the morning, and Katey, drunk and grinning, sat across from her in a dark wooden chair her grandfather had hand-carved in Ireland.

  “Had to come. Had. To. Come.” Katey was sleepy, dizzy, and maybe not as horny as he had been hour ago. He giggled. “Joke. Heard a joke—”

  “Edward, please.” Margaret Soames wanted him to leave, not to bother her anymore tonight. She didn’t like him when he was drunk, when he telephoned her at odd hours of the night and said he was coming over. Just like that. Coming over, waking her up, using her.

  She was thirty, almost six feet tall, plain as white bread, with red hair combed forward to hide a high, wide forehead. The world frightened her, which was why her eyes were never still. She was always on guard against danger, alert against the hell of living that she knew definitely was always ready to come down on her.

  Fear had sent her into a convent when she was twenty. Fear had driven her out of the convent at twenty-eight.

  “Joke.” Katey giggled, stretching his legs out in front of him and crossing his ankles. He still wore his topcoat and reeked of liquor.

  “Edward.”

  “Funny. You gonna like it.”

  She sighed. “If I listen, will you leave?” Why did she let him do this to her? Did she need his strength that much? Or were they both cripples, each with one leg and leaning on the other, thus feeling they were one whole person?

  “Joke. Now, you …” He belched. “ ’Scuse. You got to listen.” He spoke with exa
ggerated slowness, aiming a forefinger at her, a silly grin on his ax blade of a face.

  “It’s a newspaper headline. ‘The Jig is Up.’ Now, you gotta tell me what that means.”

  “I haven’t the slightest idea.” She wanted a cigarette, but if she got one, he’d ask for one and end up staying longer. She folded her hands in her lap. He was sad, vulnerable, even if he was tough and carried a gun and other men feared him.

  “Give up?” Katey giggled.

  “Yes, I give up.”

  “ ‘The Jig Is Up.’ That’s the newspaper headline when the first nigger astronaut lands on the moon.”

  “Oh, Edward … oh, God. Why—”

  He stood up, swayed, then staggered toward her. “Marge, tonight I need to be with somebody, somebody.”

  “Somebody?” She was on her feet, angry, arms stiffened against his chest, keeping him away from her. “I am so tired of being just somebody!” She stepped past him, stopped with her back to him, hugging herself, head high. To hell with spending the rest of her life as somebody.

  His hands gently touched her shoulders. “You’re not just somebody, you know that. Sorry. I’m sorry.”

  He turned her around, and they embraced. Her tears were hot on her face as she clung to him. An ex-nun in love with a cop separated from his wife. God had not given Margaret Soames very much, and it seemed to her that he held out a promise of even less in the future.

  Edward Kates was consumed by his job and could give Margaret Soames only the leftovers from his life. Because she loved him, she took the leftovers. She was plain-looking, too tall, an ex-nun who found the rigid life of a convent destructive and terrifying. And while she had escaped the convent’s four walls, she had not escaped the guilt she still felt for having left.

  He had other women. She knew; a woman always knows. And he had his job, which is all he really lived for. Margaret Soames had to be fitted in whenever and wherever possible.

  “What’s wrong?” She stroked the back of his neck.

  “Sometimes it’s too much. Too fucking much.”

  “Being a cop?”

  “Yeah. Second highest divorce rate in the country, we got. Alcoholism, suicide. We got more of that than anybody ’cept shrinks. We got shit that won’t quit. We got no money, no fucking security, and we got goddamn queers …”