by S. J. Rozan
“You’re just like him, aren’t you?” Krch asked with a weary sigh. “You can’t let things go, either. What a hot couple.”
I didn’t think there was any good answer to that.
“Go get him, huh, Rossi?” Krch said, unexpectedly. Francie stood and left the room. “What was the other case?” Krch asked me.
“It’s not connected to Ed Everest,” I said.
“Did I ask you that?”
“I was following someone. It put me at the bar. Everest came on to me, and I got interested. I don’t like the idea of his taking advantage of girls’ dreams any more than Francie does.”
“Oh? You know all about what she likes?”
“She made warning me her good deed for the day,” I said.
“She’s a fucking saint. I want to know what the other case was.”
I managed to swallow the “I don’t care.” “I’m too much like Bill,” I said. “You know I won’t tell you.”
“Was Wayne Lewis part of it?”
Uh-oh, I thought. This water might be deeper than I know about.
Saving me from having to answer right away, the door opened, and Bill and Francie entered the room.
“Sit down,” Krch told Bill peremptorily. Bill, the tight line of his jaw the only sign of what he was feeling, threw me a look as he sat. I told him with my eyes that I didn’t know, no matter what the question was. Francie took up her old chair opposite.
“Lydia and I were just discussing Wayne Lewis.” Krch said, leaning his padded forearms on the table, including everyone in his remarks, as if we were all at a seminar. “I was just asking her to explain to us why she and Ass—she and Pencil-dick here impersonated officers and broke into a crime scene.” He turned to me again with an expectant look, as though I really might answer that.
“That’s not what happened, Krch,” Bill said shortly, “I told you that.”
“Yeah,” Krch answered, speaking in reasoned tones. “But in the absence of you telling me what did happen, I’m assuming you’re full of crap and I’m asking your partner.” He turned back to me, his face a caricature of polite interest.
“You know what happened,” Bill said.
Krch swung back to him. “I’m not talking to you!”
“I was there. It was my idea.”
“You’re not doing yourself any favor saying that.”
“Anyway, it’s not true,” I stuck in.
Krch turned to me again. “What’s not?” he demanded.
“It was my idea,” I said. “But we didn’t impersonate anybody and we didn’t break in.”
“Oh, Christ, look at this, Rossi. They’re gonna be heroes and protect each other.” To me again: “I don’t really give a shit whose idea it was, and I have a witness who says you said you were cops.”
“Your witness is wrong.”
“She let you in.”
“The lady upstairs?” I asked. “I’m not surprised she didn’t understand who we were. She was scared, and she’d been drinking. She absolutely insisted that we go in and look around because the door was open and the tape was torn. I thought we were being reassuring good Samaritans. Making her feel better until the cops came.”
I thought that was pretty good, but Krch didn’t look as though he’d bought a word of it. “Love it, don’t you, Rossi? Good Samaritans. Then why didn’t you stick around until the cops got there?” he asked.
“The place wasn’t that interesting.”
“No? What would have made it interesting?”
Bill cut in. “What the hell do you want, Krch?”
“I want to know why you two are everywhere I fucking look in the last three days! And I’m talking to your partner, so shut up.” Back to me: “What were you doing in the park?”
“Having breakfast,” said Bill.
Krch’s eyes hardened. “Smith, so help me, if you fuck up my case—”
“I thought you were investigating Ed Everest,” I said, struck by a thought. “What do you care about Wayne Lewis? Why do you even know he’s dead? That wasn’t in your precinct.”
Krch looked at Francie Rossi, who hadn’t said a word since she’d come back into the room. He seemed to be weighing something. He leaned back in his chair again and tipped it backward.
“Yeah,” he said. “That’s right. I was investigating Ed Everest. You know why?”
“No.”
Krch rubbed his nose with a meaty hand. “Because what he’s doing, nobody gives a shit. No, I’m serious. Couple of dolls selling a piece of ass, turning their paychecks over to Poppa, you think that’s big news in this town? And don’t give me that crap about taking advantage of their poor little dreams. They know what they’re doing. And you can’t tell me the girls in that life don’t at least halfway like it. What’s not to like?”
Francie and I exchanged glances, but he outranked her, so she held her tongue. And I thought about Dawn Jing, and held mine.
“Then why investigate?” Bill wanted to know.
“Because every now and then,” Krch told us, “some horse’s ass chews the Commissioner’s ear off about some pet peeve. Then some schmuck cop gets stuck putting in overtime to take out the Commissioner’s garbage. This Everest cocksucker was somebody’s. The word came down, shut him down. But this wasn’t any glamour case. Hopeless. Not gonna make anybody’s career. So you stick Harry Krch with it. You know why?”
Bill said nothing. I asked, “Why?”
“ ’Cause,” Krch answered me, “Harry Krch’s got no career.” He fixed his eyes on Bill. I wouldn’t have wanted what was in his eyes directed at me. He said, “You know why?”
Nobody answered. He went on anyway. “Because an asshole P.I. who knew better than everybody else fucked up his career for him.”
The room was silent. Krch stood slowly and walked around the table to stand behind Bill. He leaned forward and put his face next to Bill’s ear. Bill drew a breath, but didn’t turn.
“See,” Krch breathed softly, “shutting down an operation like this, it’s impossible. How’re you going to do it? Everest keeps himself clean, you’ve got nothing on paper on him. But you can’t get to the girls without him. And if you get to the girls, what are you going to do? Screw ’em and try to pay? You’d get laughed out of court with something like that.” He rested his hand on Bill’s shoulder, as if they were pals discussing the ballgame in a bar. Bill didn’t move. Krch went on, in mild tones. “And the girls aren’t going to talk. They know where the paycheck comes from, the nice apartment, all that. Look what it took to shut down the Mayflower Madam. They had to set up an entire squad, just for her. This one isn’t that big, no one’s gonna do that. The Department just wants to look like it’s going through the motions in case anybody asks. So you give it to Harry, because you give all the dead-end shit to Harry. That’s what Harry’s for.”
Bill was breathing steadily, rhythmically. His eyes were fixed on the wall ahead. Under the table his right hand was curled into a fist.
“And you give Harry one fucking undercover,” Krch went on. “Some green girl. At least she’s got energy. She figures the case’ll be good experience for her, even though it’ll go nowhere.”
Francie looked at Krch. She seemed about to say something, but she didn’t.
“Wait,” I said, more to focus Krch on me, to give Bill some space, than because I wanted an answer to the question I was about to ask. “Ed Everest doesn’t use white girls. He specializes. ‘Exotics’: blacks and Asians. I saw his books of photographs. How close could Francie get?”
“Oh, no.” Krch said. He took his hand from Bill’s shoulder to wag a finger at me. I almost cheered. “I couldn’t send in some one of you people or something for him to take on. That’s entrapment, sweetie. He’d claim she was the first whore ever worked for him and he didn’t know nothing about it. I had to send someone into his world, where he lives, to listen and ask around and build a case, not to stick herself in the middle of it. See, that’s called investigating. You might not ha
ve heard of it.”
“You’re exhausting,” I said. “Did you know that?”
Krch smiled a joyless smile. Francie started a more amused one, but squelched it.
“It’s just as well this is how we did it, anyway,” Krch said. “Rossi made friends around. That’s how we got the miracle.”
Krch leaned forward again to put his face an inch from Bill’s. “The fucking miracle. See, the impossible case turned out not to be impossible. Maybe. Something that could pull a cop’s career out of the shitpile and let him at least retire as a cop, if he pulled it off. Maybe.” The last word was almost a whisper. As it trailed off, Krch slammed his palm on the tabletop. The sudden crash made us all jump. “And then suddenly Smith is everywhere I fucking look! I don’t know what your connection with this case is, Smith, but if you screw it up I’m gonna cut your fucking balls off! Now, talk to me!”
In the cords in Bill’s neck I could see what it was costing him to keep still. I wasn’t sure how much longer he had in him, and I didn’t think his grabbing Krch by his thick throat and throwing him against the wall was going to be a good idea.
“Detective,” I said.
Krch straightened up. “What?” he snarled.
“When I got here,” I said, shifting to look at him, “you said you’d been planning to have me arrested, and Bill, too, but Bill had this other idea, so you asked me to come up here to ‘work something out.’ All you’ve done since I got here is threaten us. If you want something, tell me what it is. If you don’t, arrest me or I’m leaving.”
Krch stared at me angrily for a few moments. Then he brushed past me and slammed out of the room.
I watched his back, then turned to Francie. “Where’d he go?”
She shrugged. “Get a cup of coffee. That’s usually what he does instead of slugging someone.” She looked at Bill. “You really grind his cookie, don’t you?”
Bill drew a cigarette from his shirt pocket. “He has a right.”
“No smoking room,” Francie said, pointing to the sign on the wall. She took out a cigarette of her own, lit it and reached a cardboard coffee cup off the floor for them to share as an ashtray. “You really screw up his career, like he tells it?”
“No, he did,” Bill said. “I just let everybody know.”
“Why?”
“His career or a fifteen-year-old kid’s life,” Bill said. “Didn’t look like much of a choice to me.”
“Did you do the right thing?”
Bill didn’t answer.
I said to Francie, “What do you mean?”
“The kid,” she said. “He go on to be a brain surgeon or something?”
“I don’t know,” Bill said evenly.
“Krch could have been a good cop.”
Bill pulled on his cigarette. I looked into his eyes. They seemed troubled to me, but he wasn’t looking at me.
The door opened and the man who could have been a good cop came back into the room.
He had a steaming cup of burnt-smelling coffee in one hand and a cigarette in the other. Great, I thought. Three to one. Krch sat down again in the chair he’d been in before, the one across from Bill.
“Okay,” he said. He spoke through clenched teeth, growling out the words. “Here it is. Ed Everest don’t only run hookers. He deals drugs. Not in a big way, just some pissy little stuff. To his girls, to other models. Nothing the big drug boys would be interested in. But enough, maybe, you could put pressure on one of the girls, maybe she’d give you Everest.”
I looked to Francie. “A lot of people in that world do a lot of drugs,” she said, shrugging. “It’s how the models stay thin, for one thing.”
“Now, we figured this was good,” Krch said. “Me and Rossi. Rossi was keeping her eyes open, and we were gonna choose our little informant and close in. Squeeze her a little, get something on Everest we could make stick. Everything was rosy.”
Next to me, Bill stubbed out his cigarette. He seemed to me like a pot whose flame had been turned down just before the pressure blew the lid off: still simmering, but for now under control.
“I don’t see what the problem is,” I said. “We haven’t done anything that should have any impact on that investigation.”
“Someone did. Someone had a big fucking impact on it.”
“Who?”
“Whatever son of a bitch killed Wayne Lewis. He was Everest’s connection.”
TWENTY-THREE
Oh,” I said.
“Don’t give me ‘oh’!” Krch barked. All three cigarettes were out now, but the whole room hung heavy with tension and smoke. “Don’t give me that shit!” He drained his coffee, then crumpled the cup and threw it across the room. It bounced off the wall behind my head. “You knew that. You knew about Everest, and you were at Lewis’s.”
“At the bar,” I said to Francie. “At Donna’s, when you told Andi Shechter that Wayne Lewis was dead. That’s what she meant, wasn’t it? ‘I won’t go to Ed.’ For drugs?”
Francie nodded. “Cocaine, she does. A little heroin. A lot of them do, like I said.”
“Uncooperative,” I muttered, half to myself. “Unreliable.”
“What?” asked Francie.
“An editor at Vogue said there was a note in her file. Uncooperative and unreliable lately.”
“It happens,” Francie said. “They start doing drugs to keep themselves thin. Then the drugs get to them, and they begin missing appointments and looking like hell when they do show up. Andi’s getting close to that point. She’s not doing drugs to help her career anymore. She’s working to support her habit.”
And her friends are helping, I thought, remembering a smoky evening at Donna’s and folded bills passing from John Ryan to Andi Shechter.
“So fucking what?” Krch finally broke in. I was surprised he’d let the conversation go on this long. “That’s not your damn case, Rossi.”
“I had the feeling Andi knew who Wayne’s connection was,” Francie defended herself. “I thought I could follow it one step further back.”
Krch scowled at Francie. She shrugged. “Only, Krch said to lay off.”
“Not your damn case, Rossi,” Krch said again. “We’re not Narcotics. That’s for the big boys.”
“The information was hot and the lead could have been good,” Francie retorted. “It was worth a try.”
Krch’s face disputed that, but he seemed to be saving that fight for a different time. He turned to me again. “Okay, so you knew about the connection, Everest and Lewis. I want to know how, and what you were doing at Lewis’s.”
“Until just now, we didn’t know,” I said.
“You expect me to believe that?”
“I don’t expect anything except rudeness from you, Detective. But I’m telling the truth.”
“Well, what do you know, Rossi, she’s telling the truth but she thinks I’m rude. Shit.”
“You are,” Francie replied.
“Go to hell. Look, Lydia, Smith: here’s my problem.” He was back to the exaggerated facade of reasonableness. “Now Lewis’s dead, other cops are interested. So far I don’t think they’ve turned up Everest yet, or Lewis’s other drug connections, but they will. There’s whole goddamn lists of them; they’ll figure it out. And in the middle of investigating Lewis’s murder, someone’ll lean on someone, and Everest’ll fall. And Harry’s big last chance will be fucked.”
He looked from one of us to the other, almost smiling. “Now, that would be bad enough if it just sort of happened. But to have it happen with Smith in the middle of it?” Suddenly he lifted himself out of his chair and roared, “No way! You tell me what’s going on! You give me something I can use to break this Everest thing, or so help me the two of you are looking at new careers and the inside of a cell if there’s any little thing at all Harry can do about it!”
He loomed across the table, face purple and fists clenched, while the room echoed with his words and then with silence. Bill slowly stood.
“Sit down!”
Krch ordered.
Bill shook his head. “There isn’t, Harry.”
“Isn’t what?”
“A fucking thing you can do about it,” Bill said deliberately. “All you have when you’re through yelling and screaming is a half-drunk witness who says we were at Lewis’s. That’s trespassing at best if you could make it stick. And you know you can’t. We’re leaving.”
“Bullshit!” Krch’s face spread in a sickly grin. “Here’s what I think: you’re working for some sleazeball lawyer. His client’s a drugged-up yuppie who knows something about Lewis’s murder—shit, he probably did it—and you broke into Lewis’s place to fuck up that investigation. How does that sound?”
“Like a load of crap,” Bill said.
“But crap I can sell to the D.A.,” Krch smiled. “I don’t know. You might wiggle off. But I can try.”
“But you don’t think it’s true, do you, Detective?” I asked.
“What the hell’s the difference? I can make it look like it is.” He smiled at Bill again. “What’d you do in Nebraska, Smith? Six months? I’d settle for that again. Three months for your partner, if she can convince anyone you were the brains—”
“Oh, knock it off,” I snapped. “You know, Detective, you might try ‘please.’ ”
Everyone looked at me. I kept my eyes steadily on Krch. He growled, “What the hell do you mean?”
“ ‘Please,’ ” I repeated. “It’s a word people use when they’re asking for help. Because we’re going to help you.”
The room was full of silence again. Bill melted back into his chair; Krch eventually did the same. Francie was hiding a small smile.
Bill lit another cigarette, and Krch did too. I toyed with the idea of asking if we could move this meeting to the park.
Krch, cigarette dangling from his lumpy lips, said to the room at large, “Would you look at this, she’s going to help me. You want me to kiss your feet, or what?”
I congratulated myself on passing up my chance to tell Harry Krch what he could kiss. “I know you don’t want to do it this way,” I said. “You’d like it better if we were so intimidated we’d do anything you said. But that’s not happening, Detective. This is the best offer you’re going to get.”