Strip Poker
Page 19
“Maybe they got you here on account of the murder charge and it was your gun with your fingerprints.”
Vincent shrugged, like he no longer cared.
“Lookit,” I said, “you gotta work with me here if you want me to help. Who’s after you, big man? Who wants the club or you out of business?”
Vincent smiled. “Take a number,” he said.
“All right, try this,” I said. “Who among the guests at your game would possibly be looking to take you out?”
Vincent pretended to think this over. “Joe Nolowicki, the vice cop,” he said sarcastically. “He was the arresting officer, but I guess he didn’t want me bad enough to set me up. Now, Denny Watley was a nutcase, but I don’t think he was looking for nothing. Besides, the victim couldn’t shoot himself between the eyes with my gun just to frame me. That would be too damn good. Talk about cutting off your nose to spite your face!” Gambuzzo laughed.
“Get serious, would you?” I said. He wasn’t even trying to help himself. “Tell me about your gun. If someone else shot Denny, when did they get your gun?”
Vincent shrugged again. “I guess when I dropped it. I was ducked down behind the table when Eugene and Bruno were shooting. I figured they was better shots than me, so I just dropped it down beside Eugene and kept my head low. I didn’t see nobody else grab it, but then, who the hell was looking? I was trying to save my ass.”
He looked sad, and I figured he was thinking back over that night. He shook it off and looked at me.
“Okay,” he said, “Mike Riggs had already won the club, so he didn’t need to set me up. Denny’s friend was a first-timer. He was busy trying to keep a check on Denny, so that ain’t no help.” Vincent shook his head. “No, I figure you got to look at Rodriguez.”
“Vincent, how’d these people get into the game?” I asked.
“Same as usual. They were mostly regulars, so that’s why I didn’t look to figure at Nolowicki as being a vice cop.”
“How’d he get in?”
In the background I noticed a guard checking his watch and eyeing us. I was figuring visiting hours ended soon. We had to hurry.
“The vice guy got in on account of coming into the club and slinging money around on several occasions. He was slick about it, too. It wasn’t no bum rush. The guy came in every two weeks, dropped a load, then left. You know, like he was traveling and only around every so often.” Vincent looked disgusted. “They set me up good, all right. Even got me to invite my own cop to the game.”
I wasn’t going to risk letting Vincent slip back into his sludge pond of self-pity, not with time running out and the clock ticking.
“The rest were regulars?”
“Been knowing them for a long time,” he said. “Except for that pro.”
This was what I was looking for. “And who brought her?” I asked. I was aware of holding on to the sides of my chair, waiting.
Vincent laughed. “I don’t recall. One minute we was all playing, the next a set of tits walked in the door. Eugene brought her back. I figured it must’ve been okay. Eugene don’t let just anybody crash a game.”
Now the guard was moving, walking slowly toward us, tapping the face of his wristwatch and looking at me like I should get the hint.
“Looks like I gotta go,” I said, and stood up, the receiver pressed against my ear.
Vincent took a quick glance over his shoulder and turned back to me. “Get me out of here, honey,” he said.
I looked back at him and nodded on account of I didn’t think I could speak. Vincent begging. It had come to Vincent feeling like he had to beg, and beg me no less. What were we all coming to?
I left the jail with its shiny linoleum floors and its too-bright white walls, planning on making a beeline for the hospital. I knew I could find Eugene there, and maybe Bruno was feeling like talking.
I stepped out into the late-December afternoon and sucked in a lungful of freedom. Jails give me the creeps. I pulled my coat around myself and tucked my head down, heading for the Plymouth and Fluffy and a heater that worked like a charm.
Joe Nolowicki didn’t see me. He was standing beside his unmarked car, talking into his cell phone and chewing on what appeared to be the same unlit cigar. I stood there for a second studying him. He looked like a run-of-the-mill high school algebra teacher, a little needy, a little like he sat in a recliner all weekend watching the college games and yelling at the players, loud, like they could hear him, like his advice could be in any way valuable.
I watched him for a little while longer, wondering what it was about him that made him such a good vice cop. How did he bust drug dealers? How could a guy who looked as out of it as Nolowicki get informants to give up their suppliers?
But then he turned and saw me, and I caught a little glimpse of the salesman in Nolowicki. He smiled at me like I was just the person he’d been looking to see, and I knew right then that Joe Nolowicki made his reputation off conning the cons better than they could con him.
“Sierra,” he said, smiling. “What are you doing here?”
I pulled my sweat jacket tighter around my torso and crossed my arms. Had he forgotten our last encounter?
Nolowicki got it instantly. He dropped the smile and started over, backing up, revising his approach.
“Listen, I know you probably don’t like me too much and I’m sorry about that. I had no idea.”
“No idea?” Funny, I thought I’d made my feelings known.
“Yeah,” Nolowicki pulled the cigar stump out of his mouth. “I didn’t know you were hooked up with Detective Nailor and I treated you bad. I thought you were, well, I didn’t know, and I want you to know I’m sorry.”
He looked right into my eyes and I liked that about him. He was wrong, he was admitting it, and he wasn’t afraid to ask me to ease up.
“Thanks,” I said.
Nolowicki looked out at the water for a second then back at me. “Listen, I like your guy. He’s a stand-up detective, but I know he doesn’t know what to make of me. In fact, it wouldn’t surprise me if he told you he doesn’t like me too much. I come off that way, you know?”
His eyes looked like a basset hound’s, big and pleading, so I cut him a break. “He hasn’t said a word to me.” Of course, he didn’t have to say anything. I could tell Nailor didn’t like him.
“They tell me I gotta work on it, quit coming on like a big know-it-all from the Windy City.” Nolowicki sighed and let his hands flop to his sides. “You know, maybe that’s why the wife didn’t stick around.”
I didn’t know what to do now. I wanted to get going, but the man was spilling his guts. What was I supposed to do? I decided not to waste the opportunity. I could work him as good as he was probably gonna try to work me, that’s what I could do.
“Come sit in my car,” I said, giving him the Lavotini thousand-watt smile. “It’s freezing out here. Let’s talk.” I led him over to Raydean’s car, settled him into the passenger seat, and when Fluffy growled like a German shepherd, I gave her the back-off look, all the while smiling sweetly at my newfound informant.
“You know,” I said, my voice honey, “you and John have been working like dogs on this case. The tension’s bound to get to you.”
Nolowicki nodded but didn’t say anything. I waited, almost forgetting to breathe, waiting for him to toss me a bone, any bone that involved the police investigation. It only took a minute.
“I’m thinking out loud here,” he said, “but I’m thinking that maybe this isn’t about Gambuzzo and the club. Maybe somebody wanted that Watley guy dead and picked the chaos of the robbery as his moment. Maybe it was sheer chance that it happened the way it did, you know, like a lucky opportunity.”
I raised an eyebrow like I was thinking it unlikely, but inside I was working it around in my head.
“Only trouble is,” Nolowicki continued, “almost everybody hated Dennis Watley. He was just a little pissant pain in the ass that nobody liked and nobody wanted around.”
I was waiting for the heater to warm up in the car, knowing it would be another five minutes and wishing it wasn’t so cold outside. As the sun vanished, the little bit of warmth in the air seemed to go with it.
“Denny,” I said. “Now, granted, he was an asshole, but why kill him just because of that? What is it John always says? People murder for greed, lust, or revenge. Now what has Denny got hanging him up by the balls?”
Nolowicki had started staring at the pine-tree air freshener, as seemingly transfixed as Fluffy had been, but he turned his attention away from it long enough to make eye contact as he spoke.
“Well, for one thing, him and Mike Riggs got into it on the dock last week. From what I can gather, Riggs pulled a fillet knife and promised to kill him.”
I kept my face neutral and accepting. I wasn’t about to let him know that this was such an unusual occurrence, him telling me something about an open investigation. Let him think Nailor and I talked this way all the time.
“Why was Riggs going to kill him?” I asked.
“Dunno. He denied it ever happened when Nailor and I asked him, and no one else seems to know.” Nolowicki sighed. “And then there’s Watley’s friend, Turk Akins. Two years back Watley had a little fling with Turk’s wife. Near as we can tell, Turk seems to have let it go. His wife was an alcoholic, pretty much of an albatross around his neck. She got herself killed driving drunk about a year ago. Only trouble is, we can’t find Mr. Akins to ask him. He took off after we found that biker in Watley’s garage, and not one person in town is willing to help us find him. Seems old Turk’s the neighborhood nice guy. Everybody loves Turk, maybe most especially the Widow Watley.”
“You think Turk maybe killed that biker because he knew he’d seen him kill Denny?” I asked.
“Now your honey says no, but right now, Sierra, we just ain’t got a clue. I don’t know. I figure if Turk was going to kill Watley, he’d have done it when Watley plugged his wife.”
“I don’t know, Joe, Vincent’s looking better to me,” I said. “There’s more people looking to set him up than to do Watley.”
Nolowicki thought it over. “Yeah, Watley could’ve been an accidental hit, just gravy on top of a bad situation. But it’s not like you needed murder to pull Gambuzzo down. We had him on racketeering. And now there’s the dope charges.”
“You’re wrong there, Joe,” I said. “Vincent Gambuzzo is not a dope dealer.”
Nolowicki looked at me and shook his head. “Well, I got him cold. He was dealing, Sierra, and you’ll just have to make peace with that.” He saw I wasn’t going to back down. “All right, I guess we’ll just have to disagree on that little point.” His hand was reaching for the door handle and in a moment he’d be gone. I homed in on my last objective.
“So, you work much with Carla Terrance, you being in vice and all?” I tried to sound casual, but I knew the anxiety was right there on the edge of my voice.
Nolowicki gave me a strange look and then smiled. “Can’t say as I do,” he answered. “She’s a little bit high-toned for my taste. Snooty. DEA and gotta do it all by the books. She’s got an attitude, like she’s entitled.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, you know, her being female and African-American. It’s how they are.”
I felt my entire body stiffen. Me hating Carla for being a manipulative bitch was one thing, but Nolowicki classing her as one of “them” and looking like it gave him a bad taste in his mouth was another.
“No,” I said, “I don’t know what you mean.”
Nolowicki knew. He heard the tone and knew what would come next. With one fluid movement he opened the car door and stepped out into the early-evening air.
“I’ve gotta go,” he said. “Nice talking to you.” He left and the little pine tree started to sway with the vibration from the slamming car door. Fluffy stared after him for a second and then returned to staring at the pine tree. She growled, as if to remind me that she’d warned me about trying to manipulate for my own personal reasons.
“It was just business, Fluff,” I said, but she ignored me.
I dropped the car down into reverse and pulled away from the jail. Nolowicki was sitting in his car, talking on the cell phone again. We drove past like we didn’t see him.
“Okay,” I told Fluff, “so you were right, he’s an idiot. But we did score in the information department, didn’t we? Now we have another angle to work. Mike Riggs threatened to kill Watley.”
Fluffy barked once and then growled deep in her throat. It was suppertime. Even better, it was almost time to give Nailor the one thing he seemed to be looking for: a break in his investigation. Maybe after he talked to Yolanda he’d start thinking about me, or even better, me and him.
“Okay, girl,” I called. “One more stop and then on to our just rewards.”
Fluffy was staring at the pine tree again. She looked more like she was hungry rather than as if she were envisioning herself as a huge attack dog.
“Baby,” I said, “don’t fall for the two-dimensional fantasy. Hold out for the real thing.”
But Fluffy didn’t seem to hear me. I was talking to myself.
Twenty-eight
Eugene was sitting with Bruno, the vinyl armchair pulled up close to the hospital bed. Having spent nearly a week in the hospital, Bruno was pale with a beard that had grown in the absence of the strength to shave, thinner than I’d ever seen him, changed by the opportunity to cheat death.
Eugene looked the same as he always did, tough and vulnerable, a Papa Bear in gangster clothing.
I walked around Eugene, leaned in over the rail, past the IV pole, and right down over Bruno’s face.
“Recognize these?” I asked.
Bruno smiled. “I dunno,” he said. “Here, let me check.” And before I could move, he reached up and squeezed the girls, gently but with a firm, familiar touch, like they were friends. His eyes were closed and he was smiling.
“Yeah,” he said, his voice a deep caress. “I remember them now.” He lay there for a moment and then a look crossed his face and his eyes popped open. “I thought I was dying, Sierra.”
“You were, big man,” I whispered.
“Hey,” Eugene said. “Is it enough with the emoting? I’m in the middle of this and I ain’t got my hands on shit and I gotta watch this?”
I straightened up and Bruno sighed, the moment broken. “The real thing,” I heard him whisper. “Not an implant in the house.”
I grinned. “No shit, Sherlock.”
I looked at Eugene. He was actually looking a little worse than Bruno.
“Have you slept? Have you eaten? Have you even gone home this week?” I looked around the room. A tiny Christmas tree sat on the dresser across from Bruno’s bed, against the far wall, under the TV that perched like a bird on a stand above everybody’s head.
Bruno answered for him. “He’s my fuckin’ mother,” he said. “He only left when my real mother showed up, and that was only because Tonya grabbed him by the short hairs and took him home for a little R and R.”
Eugene attempted to put on his game face and failed, a small smile creeping out at the mention of Tonya the Barbarian.
“So that’s how it is, huh?” I said. “Amazing what comes out of tragedy.” I looked back at Bruno. “When they springing you?”
Bruno smiled again. “I got me a private-duty nurse,” he said. “Gonna come to my house. Her name is Cheryl.”
I shook my head. There was an overload of testosterone in the room, but on the positive side, Bruno was back in the game. The tent forming under his blanket was a sure sign that my friend was on the mend.
I turned away from Bruno and locked on to Eugene. “I need to ask you something.”
Eugene raised his eyebrows in a question. “Yeah?”
“Vincent says you brought that pro into the game, led her into the back room, I mean. I figure you wouldn’t do that without knowing who she was or what the deal was. I need to know about her.”
“Big Tits Walking,” he said. “That’s all I could think when I saw her. She came right up to the door, stepped out of a taxi, looked at me like I should know her and said, ‘I’m here for the game.’”
Eugene smiled his warrior smile, his I-don’t-give-a-fuck-what-you-say-you’re-here-for-I-need-proof smile.
“I knew she was on the clock, but I wasn’t sure. Then she says someone placed the call to her escort service and told her to show up here. She said the big man was looking for her, so I figured Mr. Gambuzzo called her in. I don’t know why, because we got talent, but I was thinking maybe someone requested full service and not a lap dance.” Eugene shrugged. “It could happen,” he said.
I looked at him. It wasn’t like Eugene to be stupid. I could see him falling for it on account of she had all the information, but to think Vincent would call a service for a customer? Still, it was an unusual circumstance, and he was losing his shirt, not to mention the house. But no, Vincent told me he didn’t know her.
“So you let her in?”
Eugene shrugged. “She knew the stupid fucking password. You know that thing Vincent made up. Turtle.”
I shook my head. “Vincent told you to bring back all the guests who gave you a password?”
Eugene smiled. “Ain’t that just like him? Dumb fuck.”
Dumb fuck, indeed. But at least I knew someone had called Yolanda, someone in the game, someone with the password. It narrowed it down for me; it was only the same old crew of suspects, but at least it wasn’t the entire free world.
I wanted to give Eugene the business, to set him straight about S.O.P. at the Tiffany, but it wasn’t in the cards. The door to the room swung open and we were all treated to a visual that I will carry with me for years.
Dr. Thrasher, small and looking like a virgin sacrifice, stood just inside the doorway with two of Tiffany’s finest and most fully endowed on either arm. He looked like a kid in a candy shop, and there were lipstick marks on his cheeks and on the collar of his white shirt.