Dope (19 page)

But I couldn't.

“Joey,” Jim said. “I've been thinking. About Shelley. I don't know, Joe, I hate to say it, but I'm not sure if you should trust her as much as you do.”

I looked around. No one was coming our way. I couldn't see another person anywhere. It was as if the whole city had cleared out and left just us, just us two poor dumb schmucks here on Twenty-third Street left to work everything out for ourselves.

It wasn't just what Shelley had said about the car. That was just the icing on the cake. There were lots of little things like that. His number being in Jerry's book. What Harry had said Jerry told him:
I'll tell you, Harry, it was all worth it just to stick it to that son of a bitch. You know the type, thinks they're better than everyone else.
The girl at the Royale said almost the same thing:
Guess the guy thought he was really someone, thought he was better than Jerry. It really burned him up.
Harmon had McFall saying his connection was a “dirty Jew.” That could have been a lot of people—but maybe not. As far as I knew there weren't too many Jewish fellows, with heroin connections and a reputation for being full of themselves, who knew Jerry McFall, driving around in Rocket 88s. But there could have been more than one.

There was the fact that Jim was the only person I knew who could pull off a con so perfectly, who would even think of sending in shills and doing it so cleverly. There was the fact that Jim had given me so many good leads, been so interested in helping me. He'd sent me to Paul's, sent me to Bryant Park. He was the only person who knew I was going to Brooklyn that night. And there was the way Jim didn't lift a goddamned finger to help me once he knew I was in trouble.

But that didn't prove anything, either. It could have all been coincidence. Jim happened to work with a con man, he happened to be full of good ideas on how to find McFall, he happened to know where I was going that night, and then he happened to lose interest in me all of a sudden. It was possible.

None of that mattered. I knew it was Jim because it couldn't have been anyone else. There was no one else in the world who knew me well enough to set me up just like this. That was why I had known it was Jim from the very beginning. I had spent the past three days trying to prove it wasn't so. But I couldn't, because it was so. It was just like this.

I had the gun I'd bought from Harmon in my purse, and I wrapped my hand around it while we kept walking, while Jim was saying why it wasn't really about the drugs, after all. Then I stopped and pulled the gun out of my purse and held it in both hands. I pointed it at Jim.

“Jesus, Joe,” he said softly. “What the fuck are you doing?”

He took a step toward me.

“Stop,” I said. He stopped.

“All right,” Jim said, “I'll do whatever you say. Just take it easy.”

“I am taking it easy,” I said. “I'm taking it very easy. Why me, Jim? What the hell did I ever do to you?”

“Joey,” he said. “I don't know what you're talking about.” He looked at me like he was looking at a crazy woman. “Joey. Come on. What did Shelley tell you?”

We circled each other on the dark street. There were no sounds except a faraway car rumbling down Third Avenue.

“Who was the man in the Chevy, Jim? Does he work for you, or do you work for him? Which one of you killed McFall?”

Jim didn't answer me. He just kept looking at me.

He took a step closer.

“Don't, Jim. I'll kill you.”

He stood still and looked at me.

“Why me, Jim? If you were in a bind I would have helped you out of it. You should have told me, Jim. You didn't have to do this.”

“Joey,” he said, slowly. “You're exhausted, that's all. You're not thinking clearly. Come back to my place with me, take it easy for a while—”

“Shut up!” I said. Sweat was running down my forehead and into my eyes. I took one hand off the gun to wipe my eyes clean. When I opened them Jim's hand was in his coat pocket. He quickly pulled it out. I knew what was in that pocket. A gun. Probably bigger than mine. And I was sure he knew how to use it. He'd shot plenty of people in the war, and probably some before. And at least one afterward.

“Joey,” he said. He said my name like nothing had changed. Like we were friends again.

“Jim.”

He wasn't going to tell me anything. It was time. I felt like I was floating. I was seeing everything from a strange angle I had never seen from before. It all looked different from up here. Simpler. I was glad to be up here, floating all above it. I wouldn't have wanted to be on the ground, right there in the thick of it.

Except that I wanted to kill him.

I pulled back the hammer on the gun and aimed it at his chest the best I could. He pulled his arm up and straightened it out, and in the dark I saw a flash of shiny metal.

I had my finger on the trigger and I heard an awful shot and Jim went down. He fell back and landed on the sidewalk with a heavy thud, bouncing a little before he lay flat. Bits of him flew around and blood sprayed out in every direction.

But it wasn't possible. I hadn't fired.

I hadn't killed him. Someone else had.

The streets swayed to the right and then to the left, and back and forth a few times before they evened themselves out. I tasted something awful in my mouth. My dress was soaked in sweat. I thought I would throw it out when I got home.

I looked around. A flashlight was shining in my eyes. I blinked a few times. It was coming from across the street. I heard someone say, “He's down now, Joe. We got him good.” I was sure it was a voice I knew, and knew well. But I couldn't place it. “You're lucky we were here,” I heard. “Your aim was way off, you would have missed him by a mile.”

He turned the flashlight down and I could see his face. Detective Springer.

Springer and his thug came out from the shadows across the street. We all walked over to Jim, who lay on the ground where he had stood ten seconds before. He'd been shot above his stomach and below his heart, and his suit was torn up and stained red. Blood poured out from his back and made a pool around him. The bullet had gone clean through him. He had a grimace on his face. I guess the last few seconds had hurt like hell. A pistol was in his hand, ready to fire.

I wished none of this had happened. I closed my eyes again and thought maybe none of it really had.

The two cops poked him around a little, made sure he was nice and dead. Then I heard sirens, and four squad cars rolled around with about a dozen officers inside. They got out of the car and drew their guns and began swarming around the street toward me. Sergeant Springer started yelling, ordering everyone around. A couple of the guys yanked me toward their car, searched every inch of me, and then threw me in the backseat and took me over to the precinct, lights flashing all the way.

A
t the precinct two young good-looking fellows in suits locked themselves in a room with me and asked me about a thousand questions over a metal table, which they slapped their hands on a lot. I was kind of in shock and it was hard to listen to their questions. Then they asked about a thousand more, and I began to wake up. I began to realize they weren't asking me the questions they should have been. They weren't asking why I was going to shoot Jim. They were asking why Jim killed McFall.

Finally I started asking questions back. Like how did they know about Jim and McFall?

“Shut up,” one of them said. “You're looking at getting the chair for shooting Jerry McFall. We'll ask the questions and you'll answer 'em.”

I didn't think I would get the chair for shooting McFall, but I shut up anyway. Finally Springer came in the room, with a big smile on his face, and sat down next to me. The two good-looking boys smiled along with him.

“Good work, Joe,” Springer said. “You helped me nail someone I've had my eye on for ten years now. We ought to put you on the payroll.”

The good-looking boys laughed. I didn't. “How'd you know?” I said. “How'd you know Jim killed McFall?”

“You understand,” Springer said, “I don't give a shit who killed Jerry McFall. When you people shoot each other, it's like you're doing me a favor. You know that.”

I knew that.

“But there's too many people pushing junk in this city now. It's in the goddamn
Times
practically every day. People are getting scared. So I'm getting pressure from above to make arrests. When McFall turns up dead, I know he's selling dope, so I think maybe it was his connection, some kind of a lovers' quarrel.” He laughed at his own joke. “Yeah, a lovers' quarrel. Because the thing is, Joe—you might be interested in this, actually—we're gonna be taking a new approach to all this. The mayor, he doesn't want us to just pick up the street dealers anymore. He wants us to go after the big fish, the dealers who sell to all the guys who sell on the street. So when McFall gets killed, I figure maybe it's his connection. A big fish. And then when I get back from the scene I get a phone call. There's a man on the phone, telling me I ought to look into Josephine Flannigan for the Jerry McFall case. I didn't know it then, but of course that was your friend Jim Cohen on the phone. Your sweetheart or whatever you call it at your age.”

Springer laughed, and the good-looking boys laughed along with him. “Anyway,” Springer went on. “I start asking around, and I find out you've been asking around. Now I've known you since you were a kid, Joe, and I never had you pegged as a killer. Everything else, maybe, but not to kill a man, not for money. Maybe if it was a crime of passion or something like that, but not over money. So I figured either you had something going on with this McFall yourself, or someone was trying to set you up. And that's what it was, huh? Someone trying to set you up. Anyway, I figured you'd get to the bottom of it fast enough, especially if you figured your life was on the line. If you thought I was falling for the setup. So we had a man follow you for a couple days, and you led us right to him. Jim Cohen. I've had my eye on him for a long time. When the stuff started flooding the streets again, I had him pegged for it right away. And it looks like I was right.”

“You've had someone following me?” I asked. It was all sinking in slowly, one word at a time. “You've been following me this whole time?”

Springer smiled. “That's right, Joe. Surprised you didn't notice it.” He tapped his hand on the table.

“Of course,” I said, mostly to myself. “The black Chevy.”

“Well, I don't know what kind of a car Reynolds was driving,” Springer said. “We got a whole fleet of 'em for undercover work. All I know is that now we've got a major supplier down, which is gonna make my captain mighty happy. Plus we've got McFall's murder tied up, not that I gave much of a shit, but it's always nice to close a case.”

“You knew I didn't do it?” I said. “Jim could have killed me back there. I thought I was going away for life.”

“Take it easy, Joe,” Springer said.

“Take it easy!” I said, standing up. My hands started to shake. “For three days now I've been thinking I was going upstate for killing McFall, Jim is dead, and I almost got killed myself, you goddamn—”

That was it for Springer. He stood up and backhanded me across the mouth, hard enough that I fell on the floor. Then he sat back down again. The good-looking boys laughed again. I didn't. After a minute I reached over to my chair and pulled myself up into it. My hand was skinned from trying to stop the fall and my ass was bruised from my hand not doing the job.

“Okay,” I said. My lip was swollen and I tasted blood. “Okay.”

“I don't want any more bullshit out of you, Joe,” Springer said. “I could let this whole thing go and let you take the fall for Cohen and McFall. Don't forget it.”

“Okay,” I mumbled through my swollen lip. “I know. I won't forget it. But can I ask you something?”

“Sure.” Springer smiled. I guess he always felt good after smacking a woman. “Go ahead.”

“Whatever happened to the girl? Nadine?”

Springer shrugged. “I don't know. Her parents weren't interested so I let it go. Her father said she's a junkie and a whore and they don't want nothing to do with her anymore.”

“So where is she now?” I asked.

“I don't know and I don't care,” Springer said, smiling again. “I guess she ended up wherever girls like that go. You'd know better than me, huh?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I guess I would.”

S
helley was waiting by the door of the Sweedmore when I got home. I was surprised she knew where I lived—she'd never been by before. She was wearing a white suit and had a white scarf wrapped around her head and white gloves and a big white purse and dark glasses, with white rims, like a movie star. She looked pretty, but too pretty, like she was wearing a costume, and she seemed nervous, looking down at the ground and shuffling her feet a little, like she was shy. Maybe she thought I didn't want to see her.

“Hey,” I said. “How's it going?”

“Okay,” she said. She looked up. “I saw in the papers. About Jim and everything.”

“The papers?”

“Sure,” she said. “The morning edition.”

I realized I'd been in the police station all night. Then I understood why Shelley had come.

“You don't have to worry,” I told her. “I mean, about me doing anything like I said I would—telling the people in your building or anything like that. If I was in the papers—”