The Informant (8 page)

He looked across the table at a still-smiling Bad Red. I owe you, jungle bunny.

Neil, sensing what was happening, stood up, an arm around Katey.

“Let’s split.”

The cop didn’t move, didn’t take his eyes from Bad Red.

“Katey?” Neil squeezed the cop’s lean shoulders.

Katey eyed the black dealer as if staring at him through cross hairs.

“When we get what we came for.”

“It’s gone down already. Time to split.” Neil leaned against Katey, forcing the cop to stand up. Now was
not
the time to be uncool.

Neil grinned, an arm around Katey’s shoulders, a hand raised in farewell to Bad Red. “Later.” Best get Katey outside.

Bad Red nodded, grinning. “Check me out agin, y’all.” Lydia kissed him on the cheek and kept smiling while pushing his hand down, keeping it from going up her dress.

Outside, the three of them walked in the chilly October night toward Sixth Avenue. Katey, still angry at having been taken in by Bad Red and the blond drag queen, spat on someone’s car. He snorted, jamming both hands deeper into the pockets of his gray topcoat. One day, he wanted to get Bad Red in the back of a precinct house and lean on his black ass for an hour.

Neil sighed. “It’s over, man. You ought to thank Lydia for jumping in.” He knew Katey’s pride was hurt. Macho time. Cops didn’t like being made fools of, and the way Katey had been looking at Charisse,
anything could have happened.

Katey turned to Lydia. “Thanks.” He meant it.

The buy had gone down on the dance floor. Bad Red had slipped the package to Lydia, telling her to give him the money under the table. It had all been happening in front of Katey while he was drooling over the drag queen.

“Trouble is,” said Neil, stopping and forcing the others to stop and listen to him, “we can’t go into court with this buy. Lydia made it, and if we do, it’ll be thrown out by the defense. Her record. Sorry, Lydia.”

She nodded, her lower lip caught between even white teeth. “I understand. I am sorry. I could not get out of it, and if I make a fuss, if I say somethin’, maybe it all goes wrong. I had no choice, I had to do what Bad Red say.”

Neil smiled, both hands on her shoulders. “You did fine. You were beautiful, right, Katey?”

The cop nodded, in no mood to smile yet. “Yeah, beautiful. Fucking beautiful. Where you know Charisse from?”

Lydia smiled. “He’s all over town, mostly at night, ’cause the light hides things, you know? Easier for him that way. He’s saving money to go to Europe for a sex change. Couple times he’s been a mule for some people. Nothing much, a key, half a key at a time. Something like that. Took his name from Cyd Charisse. When he gets a customer, he says he’s having his period and can’t do certain things, so he does it another way, you understand?”

Katey nodded. “I understand. Thanks.”

Lydia said, “What we do with this buy?”

“Same thing.” Neil patted the left pocket in his topcoat “We see what the lab says. We’ve got us some names. Bad Red, we know, is dealing something. How pure it is, who knows? And Lonnie Conquest and his friend Julius and that mysterious man who charges a hundred thousand dollars to introduce people. We’ve got us some names, and we get busy on them tomorrow. Anything more from your cousin on the big one? Anything more on Cubans and blacks getting together?”

She shrugged her shoulders, shivering with the October chill.

“Ummmm, we only spoke once this week. He’s in Canada with his girlfriend. She’s a social worker he met in Attica.”

“Nice,” said Katey, looking around at nothing in particular. Somehow he felt dirty. Charisse. Charisse my ass.

Lydia continued. “My cousin’s the one who took me to the Palace, you know, where I see Kelly? He say a lot of money is changing hands for this deal. Gotta be millions. He say the money has to be up front and everybody has to pay.”

Neil said, “He say who’s collecting?”

Lydia nodded. “A priest. He say some priest is collecting the money.”

“A priest?” Katey frowned, snorting. “Jesus, I’ve heard of putting something in the collection plate, but a few million? You sure about that? A priest?”

“That’s what my cousin said. He said a priest is collecting. No name, but maybe I find out.”

Neil said, “Appreciate it if you could, Lydia. That would help us a whole lot. Maybe it’s a nickname, some kind of alias.”

Lydia said, “What if it’s a real priest?”

Neil raised both eyebrows, nodding. “Never can tell. Okay, it’s late, and you’ve got to get home to Olga. Katey, grab a cab, will you?”

Lydia sat in the back seat of the waiting cab, door open. “Uh, tonight. Does this mean I have to—” she dropped her voice, lifting her shoulders, pleading with her eyes—“
go into court
?”

Neil looked at Katey. “I think we can keep you out. We made contact, we got us some more names. We might hit Bad Red again, but we can work it to keep you out, right?” Neil looked at Katey.

“Yeah, sure.” Katey wanted a drink, wanted someplace warm, away from cold weather. He hated cold weather.

He said, “Something else I’d sure like to keep quiet.” He looked at Neil, at Lydia.

She said, “I understand.” A man had his pride, and a cop was even worse. If that story about Katey and the drag queen ever got out, if anybody ever heard about him and Charisse …

The two men stood watching the taxi’s red taillights move away, seeing the cab roll off Sixth Avenue and into the darkness of Central Park.

“She’s working, rolling over just fine.” Neil blew into his cupped hands, pleased with himself, with Lydia, with the buy. “So far, no turkey. We ain’t copped nothing bad yet.”

Katey turned, started walking down Sixth Avenue toward Radio City. Could have been worse. He could have gone off with Charisse, and God knows what would come out of that. He shivered, and not just from the cold. You think you’ve been around, you think you know what’s going down, and then something like this happens and you’re back to feeling like a candy-ass rookie tripping over his nightstick.

Katey needed some booze. He needed to be with somebody normal. A woman. Margaret. But it was late, past one in the morning, and Margaret was probably sleeping.

Neil said, “I’m serious about keeping Lydia out of this one. You might have to talk to your people, okay? Explain that she—”

“No sweat. She did me one tonight. Give her that much.” Katey wiped his dripping nose with the back of his hand. Goddamn cold weather. Shrivels your balls to the size of cornflakes and your cock down to a jelly bean.

He stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, looked at Neil a long time before speaking. “Tits. Charisse had
tits.
Imagine that.”

“Hormone shots, probably. I seem to recall he … she wasn’t wearing a bra.”

“Yeah, well, it’s some kind of world when you can’t believe in tits anymore.” He shuddered. “Jesus, I really do need a drink. Let’s find someplace before I fucking go bananas.”

“I won’t sleep with you, you know.” Margaret Soames, in a blue-and-white floor-length nightgown, sat on the faded yellow couch hugging herself. “Not when you come here like this.” It was almost three o’clock in the morning, and Katey, drunk and grinning, sat across from her in a dark wooden chair her grandfather had hand-carved in Ireland.

“Had to come. Had. To. Come.” Katey was sleepy, dizzy, and maybe not as horny as he had been hour ago. He giggled. “Joke. Heard a joke—”

“Edward,
please.
” Margaret Soames wanted him to leave, not to bother her anymore tonight. She didn’t like him when he was drunk, when he telephoned her at odd hours of the night and said he was coming over. Just like that. Coming over, waking her up, using her.

She was thirty, almost six feet tall, plain as white bread, with red hair combed forward to hide a high, wide forehead. The world frightened her, which was why her eyes were never still. She was always on guard against danger, alert against the hell of living that she knew definitely was always ready to come down on her.

Fear had sent her into a convent when she was twenty. Fear had driven her out of the convent at twenty-eight.

“Joke.” Katey giggled, stretching his legs out in front of him and crossing his ankles. He still wore his topcoat and reeked of liquor.

“
Edward.
”

“Funny. You gonna like it.”

She sighed. “If I listen, will you
leave
?” Why did she let him do this to her? Did she need his strength that much? Or were they both cripples, each with one leg and leaning on the other, thus feeling they were one whole person?

“Joke. Now, you …” He belched. “ ’Scuse.
You
got to listen.” He spoke with exaggerated slowness, aiming a forefinger at her, a silly grin on his ax blade of a face.

“It’s a newspaper headline. ‘The Jig is Up.’ Now, you gotta tell me what that means.”

“I haven’t the slightest idea.” She wanted a cigarette, but if she got one,
he’d
ask for one and end up staying longer. She folded her hands in her lap. He was sad, vulnerable, even if he was tough and carried a gun and other men feared him.

“Give up?” Katey giggled.

“Yes, I give up.”

“ ‘The Jig Is Up.’ That’s the newspaper headline when the first nigger astronaut lands on the moon.”

“Oh, Edward … oh, God. Why—”

He stood up, swayed, then staggered toward her. “Marge, tonight I need to be with somebody, somebody.”

“Somebody?” She was on her feet, angry, arms stiffened against his chest, keeping him away from her. “I am so
tired
of being just
somebody
!” She stepped past him, stopped with her back to him, hugging herself, head high. To hell with spending the rest of her life as
somebody.

His hands gently touched her shoulders. “You’re not just somebody, you know that. Sorry. I’m sorry.”

He turned her around, and they embraced. Her tears were hot on her face as she clung to him. An ex-nun in love with a cop separated from his wife. God had not given Margaret Soames very much, and it seemed to her that he held out a promise of even less in the future.

Edward Kates was consumed by his job and could give Margaret Soames only the leftovers from his life. Because she loved him, she took the leftovers. She was plain-looking, too tall, an ex-nun who found the rigid life of a convent destructive and terrifying. And while she had escaped the convent’s four walls, she had not escaped the guilt she still felt for having left.

He had other women. She knew; a woman always knows. And he had his job, which is all he really lived for. Margaret Soames had to be fitted in whenever and wherever possible.

“What’s wrong?” She stroked the back of his neck.

“Sometimes it’s too much. Too fucking much.”

“Being a cop?”

“Yeah. Second highest divorce rate in the country, we got. Alcoholism, suicide. We got more of that than anybody ’cept shrinks. We got shit that won’t quit. We got no money, no fucking security, and we got goddamn queers …”

She leaned back to see his face. “Queers?”

He shrugged, shaking his head. “Feel bad. Want to be with some … be with you.”

“Edward, you want to talk about it?”

He shook his head, closed his eyes, squeezing out tears. “My whole fucking life. But who wants to talk about that? Who the hell wants to listen?”

She helped him to the couch. Did he have an argument with his wife again? Was the department on him? Had a friend been killed? So many things went wrong in his world. So many things.

Katey lay down on the couch, wept silently, then suddenly fell asleep.

Margaret Soames stroked his face gently, patted his hair. After removing his topcoat, shoes, and the .38 from his belt holster, she covered him with a blanket, then sat a long time watching him sleep. When she finally went to bed, the sky over Manhattan was streaked with the gray and pale yellow of dawn.

L
YDIA SCREAMED.

“Don’t! Don’t! Oh, my God, René, you’re killing her! Stop!”

Brutally shoving Lydia to the floor, René Vega rushed toward Shana Levin, who cringed and wept, backing away from him. Shana was René’s woman, and it was nobody’s business about him coming down on her. She’d earned the beating.

Shana was twenty-four, a pretty social worker whose long blond hair now hid her red, tearstained face. She turned to run in the small apartment, tripping over a chair and yelping, arms out stiff in front of her to break the fall.
He was crazy. Insane. How could she love him?

René crouched over her, small fists punching her shoulders and back. He was going to really give it to this rich Jew bitch. She squealed in pain, drawing her legs up, covering her face with her forearms.

Lydia pulled René backward and down to the floor, and Shana crawled away quickly, sobbing, coughing; then she was on her feet and into the bathroom, slamming and locking the door behind her. René Vega, twenty-four, small, and so extraordinarily handsome that on the street he was called Pretty René, lay on his side breathing heavily and glaring at the bathroom door as though
it
were a hated enemy.

That rich bitch had to learn, man. She just had to.

Olga, Lydia’s five-year-old daughter, was also weeping. She stood in the doorway to the bedroom, wiping her eyes with the backs of two chubby hands.

“Oh, God … oh,
mi
Olga.” Lydia ran to the child, bent down and hugged her tightly, whispering to her in Spanish, stroking her dark brown hair.

Standing quickly, her child behind her, Lydia turned to René. She wasn’t afraid of him; when it came to protecting Olga, Lydia wasn’t afraid of anybody. Besides, René liked the both of them, bringing Olga presents like today, taking her to the movies, and rowing on the lake in Central Park, remembering Olga’s birthday, and even lending Lydia money when things were going bad. René had never laid a hand on Lydia; she was his cousin, and in a sense, his older sister and mother as well.

Lydia shouted at him. “You are in
my
house!
My
house, and you frighten my child, you beat a woman, and my child must see this! René, I don’t like it, I won’t have it, you hear me?”