CONCOURSE (Bill Smith/Lydia Chin) (22 page)

“And you recruited Dr. Reynolds for this?”

She glanced up quickly from tapping cigarette ash. “Good grief, no. It was his idea.”

“The whole scheme?”

“Our contract with Helping Hands was in place when Dr. Reynolds came to the Home. After a few months he came to me and offered this increase in sensitivity to Samaritan’s needs.”

“This what?”

“That’s what he called it.” The ironic tone, again.

“And in return Samaritan was responsive to Dr. Reynolds’s needs?”

“He was taking a risk, though I couldn’t see that it was ever a big one. After all, there was no way to prove that any particular patient he sent here didn’t actually need hospitalization. The worst he could have been accused of was bad judgment. But on the other hand, the payments we made weren’t big either.”

“So the account at Emigrant was his?”

“I couldn’t tell you that. But the checks we wrote were to an entity called Medical Services, Inc.”

“Why not directly to him? He was a doctor. It wouldn’t have necessarily looked strange for you to be making payments to him.”

“To our auditors, no. But that was Dr. Reynolds’s idea.”

“A man full of ideas.”

Margaret O’Connor had smoked her unfiltered cigarette down to a half-inch butt. She jammed that into the ashtray with her thumb. “I got the feeling,” she said as she settled back in her chair, “that Dr. Reynolds was not making this up as he went along.”

“What do you mean?”

“That it was all very well organized, and if you looked into that account, you would find more money than Samaritan was ever the source of. Did you know him well?”

“We met once. The time he decided I needed X rays.” And
then once more, when he was in no position to decide anything at all.

“Dealing with him was distasteful,” she said. “He was similar to some of our donors. Outwardly quite charming, but I don’t value charm. There are other qualities I value, such as perseverance and honesty.” My face must have changed. She smiled again. “You have a right to disbelieve that, after what you’ve heard, but honesty is a complicated virtue.”

“I always thought it was one of the simpler ones.”

“None of the virtues is simple,” Margaret O’Connor told me. “Only the sins.”

T
HIRTY
-S
IX

T
here were no gypsy cabs outside Samaritan. The sky was a soft blue-purple, and the light it reflected improved everything, even the tan brick, as long as it lasted; but it didn’t last long. Sodium streetlights built up slowly, efficient but finally harsh, draining everything of color. I caught a bus up the Concourse, watched the buildings slip by in place as they were slipping by in time, part of a past that was getting harder and harder to see.

By the time I got off it was night, a starless night of high haze and chill air. I zipped my jacket, crossed the street to the Home. My car was in the back lot; I’d put it there on purpose just after Robinson came, for the reason I’d told Lydia. I wanted to make sure, when I was ready to come back, that the Wells Fargo guys had a legitimate reason to let me in.

I reached the garden gate, lifted the latch.

“Yo.” The voice came from a shadow that detached itself from the shadows around it, stepped forward. A small kid, baseball cap turned backwards. It took me a second.

“Speedo?”

“Yeah,” he said. “Snake want to see you.”

“To see me?”

“Yeah. I take you there.”

“Where?”

“Where Snake be waitin’.”

“He tell you why?”

“Naw. Just to bring you.”

I looked at him, the baseball cap, the cocked head, the aggressive lean to his shoulders. No, I wanted to say, Speedo, there’s no future with Snake. Find another dream, something else you can practice being that will let you grow up. But a voice in my head said, Like what, Smith? Where is he going to look for something else, and what chance does he have of getting it if he finds it?

“Okay. I have to do something first, in here. I’ll be right back out.”

He stepped between me and the gate. “Snake say now.”

“And I say later. Ten minutes. I’ll meet you back here.” I stepped past him, opened the gate.

“On the corner,” Speedo yelled after me as the gate clanked shut. “Meet me across there, on the fucking corner.”

Yeah, I thought, okay. You got the last word, Speedo. You’re still in charge.

I went in, down, out the back swiftly, greeting the guards but not stopping. They didn’t seem particularly interested in me. Either Mrs. Wyckoff had forgotten about banning me, or Bruno’s instructions overrode hers, at least as long as she wasn’t around.

Out in the parking lot I left my gun and holster under the seat of my car. If Snake checked my gun at the door I had a feeling I’d have more trouble getting it back than I’d had at Samaritan Hospital. And I couldn’t imagine him neglecting to ask.

I checked the piano parlor and the dining room for Lydia, but it was too early for dinner and the parlor was empty. If I’d found her I’d have told her where I was going, how long to give me before she called Robinson and the Marines; but I didn’t find her and I didn’t want to spend a lot of time looking. I didn’t want to keep Speedo waiting; I had a few questions for Snake myself and this was a good time to ask them, unless Speedo got offended and split on me. I walked out, crossed to the opposite corner. Speedo sat waiting under a streetlight, with a Coke, a comic book, and a scowl.

* * *

I recognized the doorway from the photos in the toilet tank. The building was two blocks down the hill, and the apartment Speedo led me to was on the first floor. We didn’t have any trouble getting in the building; the guy in the hooded sweatshirt on the stoop nodded to Speedo with no change of expression, and Speedo affected the same hard face as he returned the nod, pushed open the door.

The hallway was dark, two broken lightbulbs overhead, a working one down the other end. The air was stale and reeked of garbage. Speedo pounded a coded knock on a scarred door. It opened on darkness; we stepped inside. The door clicked shut, softly and finally.

There were shadowy figures, not much light in the room. A slight, broad-nosed guy, who might be fifteen or he might be twenty, blocked my path.

“Hands on the wall!” he snapped. “Spread ’em!”

They must hear that on these blocks as often as most people hear “Have a nice day.” I turned, planted my feet wide, palms on the wall. Speedo, looking as though he hoped no one would notice him to throw him out, strutted casually across the room, dropped onto a couch. The wall was spray-painted with silver-and-gold grafitti; it glinted in the light from the streetlamps outside.

The broad-nosed guy went over me expertly, the small of my back, my ankles, my crotch. He kept a hand on my shoulder as he said, “Okay, Snake. He clean.”

Lights went on behind me and footsteps came forward. I started to turn.

It was a mistake. A fist slammed above my kidney, arching me with pain and surprise. I spun, made a grab for the guy who did it, but Broad-nose and someone else locked onto my arms, yanked me around, and I was face-to-face with Snake.

Now there was light. Now I could see two guys with guns across the room. Speedo sat forward on the couch, eyes bright. A round-faced guy sat next to him, relaxed with a beer, and a guy in a baseball cap leaned on a windowsill. There were the two guys holding me, and there was Snake. That made a lot of them.

“What the hell was that for?” I asked Snake.

“ ’Cause you kept my man Speedo waiting. And ’cause I don’t like you.”

“Okay,” I said. “I got it.”

“No, you ain’t got it.” A flash of gold-wrapped knuckles; pain burst in my jaw. The second punch was to my stomach, knocked my breath out. The guy pinning my right arm laughed. As I raised my head to look at Snake I tasted a salty trickle from my lip.

Snake stepped back, rubbed his left hand over the gold rings on his right. “Okay.” Gold gleamed from his grin. “Now I b’lieve you got it.”

The guys on my arms released me, but the guys with the guns didn’t put them down.

I looked around. A kitchenette stood against one wall, cluttered with pizza boxes, beer cans, wadded napkins. The chairs, lamps, couch were sprung and broken down and smelled of mildew, but the stereo was new. A doorway led to a bathroom and beyond it a bedroom; I could see a bare mattress on the floor. Some of the impassive faces watching me I recognized from the other times. Some were new to me.

“Where’s Skeletor?” I turned my eyes back to Snake.

“Got business. He be along later.”

“All right,” I said. “You got me here, you smacked me around a little—was that it? That’s what you sent Speedo for?”

“Naw,” Snake said. “I want to talk to you, white meat. Just first, I had to pay back what I owe. Now sit down.”

One of the impassive faces picked up a hard-backed armchair, clonked it onto the floor near me.

“No, thanks. I’d rather stand.”

“Ain’t no fucking invitation! Sit down.”

Broad-nose put a hand on my arm. I shook him off, looked at Snake. In his eyes I saw what I’d seen the first time we’d met, when I’d had to pull a gun to keep him from killing me with his fists.

I sat. “Can I smoke?”

Snake’s eyebrows rose; he was a man considering a reasonable request. “Yo, my brother. I got no problem with that. Anybody got a problem with that?” he asked the room.

There were some snickers, some headshakes. The guy who’d helped Broad-nose hold me said, “I wanna smoke too, Snake. Only I ain’t got no butts.”

“Ain’t no thing but a chicken wing,” Snake said. “Our white brother gonna share his with us.”

I took out my Kents, pulled one for myself, handed the pack to
Snake. Still looking at me, he passed it to the other guy. It went around the room; it never came back to me.

“Now.” Snake perched on the arm of a chair. “We got a problem.”

“Oh?” I held smoke in my lungs, let it go. I could feel my lip beginning to swell. “What’s that?”

“Fact is, we got a lot of problems.”

I didn’t answer.

“And it seem to me,” he said, “that mostly, we got them ’cause there a private dee-tective ’round here, don’t know who he working for.”

“I’m here to find out who killed men you say you didn’t kill. I don’t see what the problem is.”

“That because you ain’t looked to see what the problem is. You ain’t asked yourself, ‘Do Snake got a problem? And if he do, what I’m gonna do about it?’ ”

“You’re right,” I said. “I haven’t.”

“Well, you gonna start. And I’m gonna help you out.” He counted on his fingers. “One problem: my man Rev got his ass in jail.”

“Why is that a problem for you?”

“ ’Cause he my homey! He be talkin’ about, Snake, I don’t hang with you no more, but that bullshit. He don’t want Snake to fix him up, he wanna bust his ass for chump change up to the Home of the Living Dead up there, that his choice. But Cobras don’t sit in no jail, white meat. Not if Snake can do something for them.”

“Ex-Cobras.”

He grinned, pushed up his right sweatshirt sleeve. On the inside of his forearm was a tattooed cobra, coiled to strike. He flexed his tendon, made it move.

“See that? It don’t never go away. Once you got that, you always got it.”

He rolled his sleeve down again, still grinning.

“Okay,” I said. “So what are you going to do for him?”

“First thing, I’m gonna find out why some ass-wipe private dee-tective say he my man’s friend, then he be down at the cop house for a hour, come out suckin’ on Lindfors’s dick.”

“I was there an hour and a half,” I said. “How do you know about that?”

“I got people tell me things.”

“Have you had someone following me? First in a Dodge, then a green Chevy?”

“What? Man, you trippin’. I don’t need no one following you. I got homies all over, tell me where you be. So,” he said, “what you been doin’? You sellin’ my man, collectin’ a re-ward? What?”

“I got your man a lawyer,” I said. “Someone set him up. I thought maybe it was you.” I hadn’t thought that, and it was a stupid thing to say. Snake’s eyes flashed. He jumped to his feet. I tensed, forced myself to stay seated. The room crackled; from the corner of my eye I saw Speedo, half off the couch, grinning a grin he was probably unaware of.

Then Snake relaxed. The electricity in the room eased, as though the juice had been turned down, but not off.

“You one wise-ass motherfucker.” Snake settled onto the arm of the chair again. “Don’t seem to me you got much respect.”

“He dissin’ you, Snake,” called the kid on the windowsill.

“Word.” Snake nodded. “And I got a idea, what to do about that. But first, white meat, I’m gonna tell you the rest of my problems.”

Snake lifted his fingers again. “One, we got my man Rev in jail. Two, we got that faggot Lindfors all over my ass, because some motherfucker be killing white boys, make it look like Cobras is doing it. This a problem because you got a cop on your ass, it hard to do business. How-
ever
—” Snake folded his arms across his chest—“how-
ever
, right now it hard to do business anyway. You know why, white meat?”

“No,” I said. “Why?”

“Because I ain’t got no …” Snake hesitated. “Einstein!” He half-turned his head to the guy on the couch next to Speedo. “What is it I ain’t got?”

“Liaison,” the round-faced guy answered over the beer can. “You ain’t got no liaison.”

Snake beamed, turned back to me. “Liaison,” he repeated.

“What are you talking about?” My cigarette was almost gone. I was sorry about that. I took a last drag, crushed the butt under my foot. “What do you mean, liaison?”

“Your liaison,” Snake explained patiently, “he the guy do your business for you.”

“A bagman. I’ve been wondering who your bagman was.”

“Liaison,” Snake corrected. “See, some places me and my homies take care of, we just go on in, ’cause we know we be welcome. Other places, nigger don’t just walk in the front door. Right, homies?”

Murmurs of “Word” and “You so right, brother” from around the room.

“Anybody be coming like that,” Snake went on, “I ain’t give a shit, just send ’em my honky liaison. Then I be sending my main man Skeletor, go meet my liaison. Course, that way, it cost the customers more,” he added, grinning. The grin faded. “But now my liaison be dead. Now what I do?”

“Honky?” I said. “Dead?” The headlights of a car stared into the room momentarily as it turned the corner outside. In here, nobody moved. I thought of a motionless body in the eye of a storm. “Oh, Jesus,” I said, half to myself. “Henry Howe.”

“Yo!” Snake high-fived Broad-nose, who was standing near him. “Maybe you ain’t so stupid, white meat.”

I wasn’t sure that was true.

“If you ain’t,” he continued, “that a good thing, ’cause look what we got.” The fingers, again. “We got the Rev in jail. We got Lindfors on my ass. And we got no liaison. No liaison mean we losing money every day, ’cause ain’t no one collecting. We losing money, and I got expenses.” He gestured broadly at the group behind him. Their eyes were all on us, their faces blank; this was live television, without commercials.

“Plus,” Snake expanded, “we ain’t collecting, people be talking. That Snake, he got his homey in jail, he got a cop on his ass, plus he ain’t collecting. Maybe he ain’t so big as we thought.” He stuck his hands on his hips. “See, I got a reputation I got to protect. What I sell, people don’t think they need it, they ain’t gonna buy it. They be talking about, Snake getting old. Skeletor, he fat—” grins and snorts from the Cobras—“and that motherfucking Einstein spend so much time on his butt thinking, he don’t know how to get down no more.”

Einstein rose, lifted his beer, took a bow.

“See,” Snake went on, “long as the brothers and sisters think we cool, we cool. But long as I got my problems, maybe they thinking we ain’t cool.” He shook his head.

“Sounds bad,” I said.

“Fucking right it bad! Now, you probably sitting there thinking, what can I do, help Snake out?”

“Yeah,” I said. “That’s just what I’m thinking.”

“Good.” He smiled. “ ’Cause you gonna fix it all, my brother, now that you working for me.”

“Wrong. I’m not working for you.”

“No.” Snake stood. From my low angle, his head and shoulders eclipsed the ceiling’s bare bulb. I squinted against the glare surrounding him, but his features disappeared in it. “My brother, you is so wrong. You working for the Cobras now. You working for Snake.”