Big Silence (25 page)

Jimmy Stashall had far more cause for a broken blood vessel in his head than cranberry sauce and sweaters. Jimmy’s very freedom was at stake, and he was commanding a small gang of total incompetents. The last person who worked for him that had any brains was Mickey Gornitz, who Jimmy now wanted dead.

“You’ve got the Wilhite kid’s picture. You’ve got his name. You’ve got his credit card numbers. You’ve got his out-of-state plate number,” said Jimmy. “And we know he’s in town. And you can’t find him.”

“Maybe,” said the big man. “If we ask some of the other guys. Sal, Solly One, the Greek, Schwartz, you know?”

“I don’t want to do that,” Jimmy said calmly. “I don’t want them in if I can help it. That phone’s gonna ring in a few seconds. I’m gonna be very careful because I and anyone with any brains is gonna know that the line is tapped by the FBI, state attorney, city cops, and maybe even the producers of fuckin’
Law and Order.
And you’re gonna keep —”

The phone rang. Jimmy watched the small monitor below the receiver where the number being called from appeared. Not only did he not recognize it, he could tell by a glance at his pad that it was a different number from the one from which he had been called three times before. He picked up the phone.

“Phone booth,” said the voice at the other end. “Downstairs.”

The caller hung up.

Starshall listened to the droning sound for a few seconds and then gently, very gently, put the phone down.

“That,” he said, “was the Wilhite kid. Find him. And remember, you dumb … remember, he doesn’t know we know who he is. Just find him and tell me where he is. Don’t touch him. Don’t talk to him. Don’t whack him. Call our contact downtown. He must know something.”

Jimmy was up now. He had a phone booth to get to fast and he didn’t like it. He didn’t like being pushed by a punk.

“We’ll find him,” said Heine.

“Your assurance fills me with confidence,” Jimmy said adjusting the sleeves of his jacket. “Find him.”

Stashall rushed past his secretary and the man sitting in a chair against the wall reading a magazine. Heine would soon be passing curses onto the man reading peacefully. That was fine with Stashall. He was suffering. Everybody should suffer all up and down the food chain.

The phone booth was half a block away. The sky was overcast and the day cool. He refused to run. They might be watching him, calling him from nearby. A woman was using the phone. Jimmy listened, hoping she was about to end her conversation.

“You think I don’t know that?” she said angrily. She was about forty, maybe older, because she had the haggard look of a loser and user. Her arms were probably dead sore and her nose and throat raw. Maybe she had been pretty once. Maybe.

“I’m not comin’ in,” the woman said, pushing uncombed black hair from her pale face. “We can talk now … go ahead. You talk. I listen, but this is Pauley’s phone and he’s gonna come by in a while and want to use it … any minute … You talk … No, you. I’ll listen and then maybe I’ll talk about coming back to the house … Because I don’t want to face you and the others … There. I said it. Happy? … No …”

Jimmy checked his watch. It had been almost three minutes since the Wilhite kid’s call to his office. A cop would be watching him from somewhere, and maybe one of them would try to come close enough to hear what he was saying.

“Lady,” Jimmy said politely, tapping the woman on the shoulder.

She waved him away, pressing her lips together and trying to ignore him.

“Lady,” he repeated. “Tell whoever that is that you’ll call back later.”

The woman turned her back on Jimmy.

Enough. Cops and punks push him around and now a wasted bitch druggie. Enough. He would dearly love to be carrying heat or even a knife though he hadn’t used any blade on a human in almost twenty years. Jimmy reached over and pushed down on the phone cradle to cut the connection. The pale woman looked at Jimmy and swung the phone toward his face. He had been dealing with this kind of thing for most of his life. He caught her arm with his and punched her with the other. His blow hit the woman low in the stomach. She dropped the phone. She folded forward clutching her gut and moaned. Jimmy hung up the phone, which almost immediately began to ring.

“I’m gonna tear your heart out,” the woman screamed.

Jimmy fumbled for his wad of bills, pealed off one of them, and handed it to her as she tried to rise. It was probably a fifty, maybe a hundred. He didn’t look. He wanted to answer the goddamn phone.

She took the offered bill, looked at it and at him with a murderous hate. Then she tried to spit at him but she was dry. She pushed the bill into the pocket of her jacket, turned her back, and limped down the sidewalk holding her stomach and moaning, but much more softly than a few seconds ago.

Jimmy picked up the phone.

“Someone using the phone?” asked the voice.

“I got rid of them,” Stashall said, finding it nearly impossible to control his anger.

“I’m calling Gornitz in fifteen minutes,” the voice said. “I’m going to tell him his time is up, that his son is about to be killed. I’ll make a suggestion about what he has to do, and when it’s done, you pay the money we agreed on, the way we agreed on.”

“I keep my word, and like I said last time, if you’re a cop, I know this is all a setup and I’m joking.”

“It’s not a setup,” said the voice.

As a matter of fact, Jimmy’s word on the street was as good as the bitter coffee that Lieberman had tried to drink in Gornitz’s room. He had double-crossed, lied, cheated, stabbed, and shot his way about halfway up the mob ladder. Now, at a time when it looked like things were looking even higher up, the Gornitz thing had blown. Everyone knew about it or soon would. If Jimmy had connections in the police department, so did everyone else he knew. If it looked like Jimmy was going down, someone might decide he might talk to make a deal. Somebody, and he knew who, might put out a contract on Jimmy. It was likely. So, Jimmy would lie and probably kill or have killed anyone, including his own family, to save his behind.

“Listen,” said Stashall. “No more calls. I —”

Stashall felt rough, cold fingers on his neck. A thumb was digging deeply into his throat. He choked.

“What’s going on?” the caller asked, but Jimmy couldn’t speak.

He felt himself being turned around to face a burly, dark man with a bushy well-trimmed mustache. The man wore a raincoat.

“This is my phone,” said the man. “Lorraine, when anyone wants her, which nobody does much, works for me. You hurt her.”

“Look,” Jimmy tried to say, knowing that if he survived this, he would have the man choking him, Pauley, killed in an alley. He might even take a chance and do it himself.

“You’re getting off easy,” Pauley said softly, showing remarkably white, and possibly false, teeth. “I’m just gonna cut your old face a little.”

“What’s going on?” cried the voice on the phone.

A knife appeared. Jimmy shot a knee toward big Pauley’s groin. Pauley turned to his right and the knee hit him in the thigh. Jimmy went for the man’s eyes, but Pauley turned away and held the knife down, probably, Jimmy guessed, now planning murder, murder for using a goddamn public phone. Jimmy kept struggling, the pain in his neck pumping, throbbing. Jimmy closed his eyes and gritted his teeth, waiting for the blade.

And then the hand on his neck loosened and big Pauley let out a gagging sound. Pauley stepped back, his arm behind him, the knife clattering to the sidewalk. Someone was behind him. One arm around Pauley’s neck, the other lifting his arm in a hammerlock. Pauley grimaced.

“I’m a cop,” said Hanrahan. “I’m a big cop. I’m a tired cop. I’m a cop with a lot of problems we can share over a cup of coffee some time. But right now I’m feeling a bit hopeful. So, I want to see you running down the street, not walking, running. If you do anything less, I haul you in and have you searched and … you know the fire drill. Nod.”

Pauley, his face turning red, nodded. Hanrahan let him go and Pauley reached down for his knife. Hanrahan grabbed the reaching hand and squeezed.

“Leave it and run,” he said. “Now.”

Pauley did as he was told. For a drug dealer and an addict, he was in pretty good shape. A few people stood across the street watching, not understanding. No one enlightened them.

Hanrahan took the phone and put it to his ear.

The caller had hung up. So did Hanrahan.

Stashall was rubbing his bruised neck with both hands.

“That’s a dead man running down the street,” Stashall croaked.

“That he is,” said Hanrahan, “but he doesn’t need your help to come to the realization. Your caller’ll call back. Maybe right away. Find out what you can. I’ve been watching. I’ve heard enough.”

“I was talking to my wife,” Stashall whispered in pain. “I —”

“Call her back,” said Hanrahan. “I’ll just ask her.”

“No, I was on my way to my car,” he said his pain obvious to the policeman and the audience across the street. “I just remembered I promised to call her in case she wanted me to pick anything up.”

“Your car is in the other direction,” said Hanrahan.

“This is the nearest —”

He was cut off by the ringing of the phone. Stashall started to reach for it.

“Do the right thing, Jimmy.”

“Hello?” the voice said cautiously.

“I’m here,” croaked Stashall.

“Who’re you?”

“Stashall. Some drug dealer choked me. Trying to rob me. I got rid of him.”

Hanrahan, who was listening, nodded that Jimmy was doing just fine.

“You sure?”

“I’m sure. Some drunk dealer talkin’ to another one,” said Stashall. “How the hell do I know with these crazy people?”

“Good-bye,” said the voice, and the phone went dead.

Hanrahan and Stashall faced each other and the detective said, “David Donald Wilhite. You know that name?”

Stashall, the pain staying at a high level, tried to meet the detective’s eyes.

“Don’t know that name,” he said, closing his eyes in agony.

“I think he just called you,” said Hanrahan. “I think you’re lookin’ for him. Well, Mr. Jimmy Stashall, so am I, and I mean to find him and I mean to be very upset with anyone who stands in the way or has the bad luck to get to the young man first. I know you’re hurtin’. So just nod to show we understand each other.”

Stashall nodded.

The nod was a lie. Both men knew it, but the policeman thought it might make the mobster a little cautious.

Hanrahan turned and walked away. Stashall considered saying, “Thanks,” but it wasn’t worth the effort.

“S
O, VIEJO, AGAIN YOU
tickle my
tochus
and I tickle yours,” said Emiliano “El Perro” Del Sol, rubbing the white scar that ran down his face and smiling at three members of his gang to see if they got the joke. They didn’t.

Abe Lieberman was sitting in the darkened restaurant owned by El Perro. It was a small but very good Mexican restaurant on North Avenue. Emiliano had the good sense to convince a retired and illegal Mexican cook who spoke no English to return to the kitchen. Since Emiliano paid in cash and paid reasonably, the man had been eager to return to work though he was over seventy years old. Emiliano had also persuaded the previous owners, who had done their own cooking, to sell to El Perro at a reasonable price. The old couple had rationalized that they were planning to retire soon anyway, move in with their son and his family, and contribute to the rent. They had also rationalized that it was better to be alive with a pocketful of cash and well than dead or maimed.

The CD player in the corner on a wooden table blared out salsa, Ruben Blades and Julio Iglesias nonstop, during the conversation between the policeman and the gang leader. The salsa, according to Lieberman’s taste, was okay. Blades was terrific and Julio, El Perro’s idol, could be done without.

There was an almost finished plate of food in front of Lieberman. It had been prepared the moment he had entered the restaurant. It was some kind of spicy omelette with onions, peppers, and a covering of red sauce. Since he could not offend his host, Lieberman ate. It was great. It might well kill him, but at the moment, it was great.

As it turned out, the mad gang leader and the detective had mutual favors to ask.

“Viejo”
El Perro had said over someone belting out a salsa song that sounded like
“Cuando Yo Sueno.”
“There’s a stupid dumb jerk your guys are holding over on the West Side. Name’s Willie Coles. Black loco from the Lawndale Razors. Most times I don’t give a shit about them guys, you know? But their top man, he calls me. He says, ‘Emiliano, you get my guy out and I owe you. They say you got connections.’ I been waitin’ for that piss to owe me. I got somethin’ I want from him. An’ I wanna show him I got the connection. You,
Viejo.”

“What’s this citizen being held for?” asked Lieberman finishing the last of the omelette and taking a sip of Diet Coke.

“Beatin’ somebody up.
¿Quien sabe?
He didn’ kill nobody. But Willie Coles, he got a big record.”

“You got a phone?”

“Telephone,
ahora,”
El Perro said to Piedras, who lumbered over to retrieve a white portable phone from the darkness near the CD player.

Lieberman dialed the number. He knew it and almost every station in the city not because of his phenomenal memory but because he had called them all thousands of times.

When a weary desk sergeant — they’re all weary — answered the phone, Lieberman identified himself and asked who was handling Willie Coles.

“You’re still alive, Abe?” the desk sergeant joked.

“I’ll still be getting the bad guys when you’re in a bar in Boca Raton drinking Bud, wearing ugly shirts you don’t tuck in, and telling lies about what a hero you are.”

“You may be right at that,” said the sergeant. “Andy Moore’s on the Coles arrest. You’re lucky. Andy’s in. Hold on.”

There was a click and a buzz and a very deep voice: “Detective Moore.”

Andy Moore was somewhere in his forties, late forties. He was tall, lean, black, and wore horn-rimmed glasses. He looked like a college professor and talked like one. Andy Moore had gone to college, had a degree in criminal justice. Andy Moore was also the most feared police officer on the West Side. Even the toughest gang members didn’t want to be left alone in an interrogation room with Moore, who had perfected the art of painful beating from years of practice and a black belt in some kind of martial art with a Japanese name. Andy Moore was a greater deterrent to crime in the Lawndale district than the death penalty.