Jimmy and Fay (24 page)

“There's a younger guy involved, too, who's sort of like the guy you described, at least with the round glasses. Looks like Trodache is doing what this fella tells him to do. That mean anything to you?”

She thought and shook her head.

“Okay,” I said. “Anything more about Oscar Apollinaire? Did you ever see him with Nola?” I didn't want to tell Daphne about the whole Bobby-becoming-Oscar business. That would only confuse things, and I can't say that I really understood it myself.

“No, I've been thinking about that ever since I talked to Cynthia, and I never saw them together, but there were a lot of nights when I was out on call while Nola stayed in.”

“Did you tell Nola about Apollinaire's offer?”

“Maybe, but just talking, you know. It happened about a year before I met her, maybe more. Hell, I don't remember the dates.”

I remembered the date just fine, but again I didn't say anything. “You said there was a guy who worked at a restaurant who was stuck on Nola and they might have taken off together.”

She leaned back on the divan and said, “That was the first thing I thought of. The place isn't far from my apartment. I went there before I called Cynthia. The guy's still there and now he's moony over another girl. He said he hadn't seen Nola since the last time we were in together. He even showed me a picture of his new sweetie and, wouldn't you know it, she's a ringer for Nola. Same smile, same tits.”

I got up, put the book back in the safe, and poured another tot of rum in Daphne's glass. I asked her if she knew Peter Wilcox.

“The banker? No.”

“He wasn't a customer of Polly's?”

“I never heard her mention him, and when she lets down her hair, Polly can drop names with the best of them.”

“So what are you looking for?” I asked. I suspected the real reason she came uptown to my place was that her sugar daddy hadn't called and she was lonely on a Saturday night. Hell, that was true for most of my customers, whether they had a sugar daddy or not.

“She's my friend. I want to be sure she's okay. When I talked to Cynthia, she said one of the other girls said she thought she saw Nola at Bergdorf's a month ago. I hope that's right, because it just makes me sick to think about what Oscar might have done to her. No, don't give me that look. Nola's like me. We may be hookers, but we've got standards. There's lines you don't cross.”

My look had nothing to do with what Nola did. I was thinking about that red stain on the dress. “And why are you coming to see me?”

Daphne smiled, stretched out her legs, and crossed them slow, with a hiss of silk as her stockings rubbed together. “Because you want to find her, too. You want a taste, I can tell. What man wouldn't, after seeing those pictures?”

“I'm not a detective.”

“But you're interested.”

I shrugged. “True enough. You gonna pay the freight?”

She squared her shoulders, thinking we were playing on her ground now. “I'm sure we can work something out.”

“One hundred up front,” I said, thinking of Miss Wray's expenses.

That pissed her off, but she tried not to let it show. “Now, how can you act that way after all that we've—”

I laughed. “Don't bother, Daphne. Come on, we both know the score.”

She started to say something but stopped and her expression changed. “It's her, isn't it? The barmaid. Yeah, that makes sense.”

“I don't know what you're talking about,” I lied, “but here's what I'll do. Forget about the hundred. I don't know what the hell is going to happen with this screwy business, but it ain't over, I know that much. If I find out anything about Nola, I'll tell you. If I see her, I'll tell her to call, okay?”

She stood up and smoothed her tight dress over her hips and cocked her head at me. She wasn't trying to be sexy. At least, I don't think she was. She said, “Yeah, that sounds like a square deal.”

I walked to the door with her and said, “One other thing. There may be a kid out on the street. Wearing an overcoat, cap pulled down over his face. He's working with that shithead Trodache. If he looks like he's paying any attention to you when you leave, come back inside and . . . No, wait, here's a better idea. Stick around for a few minutes. Have one on the house and let me take care of him.”

I went up the back stairs to the kitchen of the Cruzon Grill. The cooks were in the middle of their evening work, but one of them took time to slice open a long loaf of bread and load it up with some leftover ham and cheese and a lot of mustard. I had him cut it in half and saved the big end for myself. He wrapped the other part in butcher paper. I put it and a pint of milk in a paper bag and went out the front door of the restaurant.

The kid was still across the street, but he was keeping an eye on the front door of the speak. That was a couple of steps down from the sidewalk. The restaurant was seven steps up. He didn't notice me until I was in front of him. It was pretty damn cold then, and he was shivering in the threadbare overcoat and cap.

I had no idea what I was doing, but I remembered how he'd eyed my cherry pie in the diner and figured it wouldn't hurt to confuse him. And I'm embarrassed to say that it was right then that I realized I'd left the Banker's Special in my coat back in the office. If the kid wanted to play rough, I'd have to beat him up with my stick and a milk bottle.

He flinched back a step when I held the bag out to him, just like he did when Trodache threatened him in the diner. “Go ahead, take it,” I said. “Just a sandwich and a bottle of milk. You look like you need it. I guess Trodache's got you out here to keep an eye on me. It's okay. Here, take it.”

The kid was cutting his eyes from side to side like he was trying to decide which way to run. I put the bag on the sidewalk between us and took a step back.

“What's your name?”

He looked at the bag and back at me. I took another step back and leaned on my stick.

“I don't know what Trodache told you about last night, but he and the boss got the money. Yeah, the moving picture guys came up with the six thousand.”

He had been eying the bag, but when I said that, his head snapped up.

“The pictures have been taken care of. We're square, right? Or have you still got some beef with me?”

He snatched up the bag, stepped back, and peeked inside. When he got a whiff of the ham, his lips twitched and he drooled a little, but I could tell he was confused and probably wouldn't do anything as long as I was there.

I said, “Look, I don't mind your hanging around. It's a free country. But the beat cops look out for me and one of the neighbors might complain about you loitering here, you never know. After all, it's mopery with intent to gawk and they'll lock you up for that. But that's none of my business. Just don't try to come inside. Fat Joe won't let you in.”

He might have understood half of what I said. When I saw that he wasn't going to answer, I turned to go, but I thought of something else and turned back.

“One more thing,” I said. “Do you know what your boss did with that goat? Remember that? Yesterday afternoon?”

I stared at him long enough to see that he knew what I was talking about. Finally, he nodded.

“Ask your boss about that. Or go back and take a look for yourself.”

He hesitated some more, then snatched up the bag, and ran. I didn't see him again that day.

Back inside, I found Daphne at a table with a glass of white wine in front of her. Connie was sitting next to her, and they were so involved in whatever they were talking about they hardly noticed me. I knew I was in trouble.

I went back up to the kitchen for my sandwich, ate in the office, and went back to the Chelsea to get ready for business. I thought a good shower might clear things up, but all I got from it was more questions, most of them about Peter Wilcox. And standing there with the water pelting down on my head, I asked myself why I was doing this. I mean, I already did what we agreed to. I got the money to the guys who wanted it. They said the pictures were gone. The End. But then I took Miss Wray's expense money and agreed to use the rest of it looking for Nola Revere. But if I spent it, what did that leave me with? Empty pockets. Then there was that goddamn goat. What the hell did that mean? And now Daphne wanted to find Nola, and she was talking to Connie. Things were not looking good for yours truly.

Getting dressed, I went with a medium gray herringbone from Hickey Freeman with a light blue shirt and a black-and-gold-striped tie.

Daphne was gone and Detective Ellis was waiting at the bar when I got back to the speak around seven. It was a light crowd for a Saturday, and the Democrats weren't as cocky and happy and free with their money as they had been recently. Frenchy chalked it up to the bank holiday. He said that most of the regulars were asking for credit. I said that was fine as long as everybody signed their tabs. Connie and Marie Therese made a point of not looking at me.

Ellis followed me up to the office. He went straight to my liquor and topped off his gin. I didn't ask if he'd signed a tab. He collapsed onto the divan like he was never going to get up, closed his eyes, and said, “How'd it go last night? Sorry I had to take a powder on you like that, but Captain Boatwright decided that the goddamn bank holiday was a chance for him to show how prepared his men were to deal with emergencies. He assigned uniforms to spring to the defense of every post office, theater, and business that does business in cash, and he let it be known that we'd provide protection to anybody making a goddamn deposit. I had to stop by each one of them all night. Haven't been home since Thursday, and he's got me on tomorrow, too. What happened with you?”

I wasn't sure how much to tell, so I just started where we left off. “After I called your precinct, Trodache called back and asked for the money. We had a little back and forth and agreed that Abramson and I would take the six Gs to an address up on Fifth Avenue—900 Fifth.”

Ellis opened his eyes and sat up. He knew that wasn't a neighborhood where extortion payoffs were the order of the day.

“Turned out to be one of those mansions that takes up the best part of the block. Looked pretty good inside, too, but the funny thing was, the place was almost empty. And you know what else is funny? Peter Wilcox lives there. Yeah, the banker. I didn't see him there. Radio and newspapers say he's down in Washington for the inauguration, so maybe he let some friends stay the night. Anyway, Trodache was there along with a weird younger guy who acted like he was in charge. He took the money, promised that he'd get rid of the pictures, and that was that. Actually, there was a little more to it, but when I told the lawyers and Miss Wray what happened, they were happy.”

Ellis just stared at me for a long time, and said, “Peter Wilcox. The Ashton-Wilcox Peter Wilcox? You're sure about that? Christ, if somebody like that is involved in this, you've got to get the hell away from it right now. I sure as hell am. It's not worth my career, and that's what we're talking about.” He took a jolt of gin.

“And there's something else,” I said. “You know the Wilcox Foundation for Wayward Girls?”

“Oh, Christ, don't tell me that's part of this.”

“I think so. You see, that book of dirty pictures of the girl who looks like Miss Wray? Well, it looks like the book was printed up to promote a stag movie. And there was this goat—”

“Oh, hell, don't say that. Don't say anything else about Peter Wilcox or stag movies.” He got up and pointed at me. “Dirty pictures are one thing, but movies, that's something else to Captain Boatwright. With pictures, he's happy enough to look the other way, but not movies. Not with him and the monsignor.”

Yeah, I knew that. Boatwright was asshole buddies with Monsignor McCaffrey. He was the department chaplain, and he was also the biggest and loudest “antivice” crusader in the damn city. Nothing set him off like racy magazines and moving pictures. Everybody knew he hated them more than hookers. He'd really bust a gasket over a stag movie.

Ellis said, “Lemme tell you how this works. The actress gets her tit in a wringer when she takes a gander at the pictures, so she calls some executive at RKO. The executive calls some assistant commissioner he knows at the department, hell, maybe Commissioner Mulrooney himself for all I know. Yeah, he tells Mulrooney to do something about it without the press getting wind of it. Since this is happening in Manhattan, it comes down to Captain Boatwright because they all know that Boatwright will give it to me, and whatever it turns out to be, I will make sure that the department is not embarrassed. And now you're trying to drag Peter Wilcox and dirty movies into it. Shit, shit, shit.”

He muttered something I couldn't understand to himself and said, “But the RKO lawyers were happy with what you told them last night, you said that. And the actress, she was happy too, right?”

“Yeah, but—”

“No ‘yeah, but.' Stop right there. Forget about Wilcox and a stag picture. Can I go back to Boatwright and tell the son of a bitch that this situation has been taken care of to everyone's satisfaction? The next word out of your mouth better be ‘yes.'”

“Yes, but—”

“What the hell did I just say? No ‘yes, but,' just ‘yes.' Know when to shut up, Quinn. Look, remember the other night when you were bitching about the Fire Department inspector who wanted fifty bucks just to show up? Well, if I can tell this inspector that you were involved in doing a personal favor for the commissioner, he might,
might
, lower his price, and the same goes for the dozen other guys whose palms are going to be crossed with silver if you expect to go legit with this place. You following me on this?”

I nodded.

“So can I tell Captain Boatwright that this matter has been taken care of? And the next time the commissioner is hobnobbing with these guys from RKO, they are going to shake his hand and thank him for handling it so discreetly? Can I tell him that?”