Too Old a Cat (Trace 6) (2 page)

“And sales tax,” Tracy said.

“Hah?”

“Four percent sales tax,” Tracy said, shaking his head sadly. “Us and hairdressers and interior decorators. We’ve got to charge four percent.”

“They got all the fags,” Alcetta said with a smirk.

“Just pay the twelve dollars,” Tracy said.

“I don’t like paying no sales tax,” Alcetta said.

“Pay the twelve dollars.”

Alcetta rooted around inside his billfold and finally brought out a ten-dollar bill. “I got no singles,” he said.

Tracy took the ten. “You owe me the two,” he said.

“Oh, here.” Alcetta handed the detective a small glossy photograph. “That’s my wife. One of the ones I took of her with her clothes on.” He guffawed again.

Tracy looked at the photograph of a lovely redhaired woman with a strong intelligent face and a smile too natural to be adopted only for a photo session.

“Very pretty,” he said.

“And some knockers too,” Alcetta said.

“I’ll start right away,” Tracy said.

“Okay.” Alcetta looked at his wristwatch. “Christ, I got to get out of here. I got business. You call me like on Monday?”

Tracy nodded and Alcetta walked toward the door. Tracy rose and stopped him. He towered over the younger man by at least four inches, and while Sonny Alcetta had the shaped look that came from working hard at body-building, Tracy had the look of bulk that came from being, by nature, a big man. He reached into his top left drawer and removed a business card from a box of a thousand. This was the way, he thought. In business a year, and he’d already given out a half-dozen cards. At that rate, he had a 141-year supply left. If he didn’t move and change his address.

“Here’s one of my cards,” he said. “Call me anytime.”

Alcetta took the card and read it before putting it into his jacket pocket.

“Here. Take some more,” Tracy said. “I’ll bet you’ve got many friends who could use a good private detective.”

“Okay, okay. Enough with the junk cards,” Alcetta said, but he stuck those cards in his pocket too, then left the office.

Tracy went to the window and looked down. A brown Lincoln was parked at a fire hydrant across the street. He saw Alcetta walk across the street, climb into the back seat, and the car drove off. As it sped down the street, Tracy noticed a bumper strip on the rear of the car. It read:

ITALIANS MAKE THE BEST LOVERS.

“God save us everyone,” Tracy mumbled.

Two miles uptown, in one of those transitional Manhattan blocks where multimillion-dollar brownstone mansions mixed with pricy boutiques and chi-chi little restaurants, two men sat alone in the dimly lit kitchen of one of the restaurants.

The black man stirred his coffee at the small stainless-steel work table, put his spoon in his saucer, and drank slowly from his cup before he said, “Let’s just try to make this work for a change.”

“There you go again,” his companion, a white man, said. “Of course it’s going to work. Don’t my ideas always work?”

The black man rolled his eyes. They were alone in the kitchen and their voices echoed metallically from around the high-ceilinged room.

“Well, don’t they?” the white man demanded.

Detective William (Tough) Jackson refused to answer. He looked at the white coffee mug that was almost hidden inside his huge black hand.

“Don’t be stubborn,” the white man persisted. He was leaning back against one of the sinks in the kitchen, waving at Jackson with the coffeecup in his right hand. “If Ed Razoni tells you it’s going to work, it’s going to work. That’s that. Would I lie to you?”

“Not about anything unimportant,” Jackson said. He looked across the room at the white man and smiled. “You forget, you’ve been my partner a long time.”

“Too long,” Razoni grumbled. “You want, we’ll do it your way. You get a job as a dishwasher here. A couple of years from now, when they show up, you can put down your sponge and go out and shoot them.”

“That wasn’t my idea,” Jackson said. “My idea was that we wire Tippi for sound, and when they come in to shake him down, we nail them.”

“Too complicated,” Razoni said. “First of all, we’re not supposed to arrest these guys. Just discourage them. So we get Tippi involved and then we’ve got to book them and then we’re jerking around in court for the rest of our lives, and then they get off anyway because Tippi wasn’t wearing a sign that says, ‘Attention, you thieving bastards, I am wired for sound.’ My way’s better.” Razoni slammed his coffeecup onto the drain board of the sink. “Shit, Tough, why do we always get crap jobs? What the hell is so important about the mob shaking down some restaurant owner? What the Christ did he expect? If you open a restaurant, the mob’s gonna want to be fed. Everybody knows that. So what’s the big deal?”

“Yeah. But, you know, he gets the mayor’s ear and the mayor gets the commissioner’s ear and the commissioner gets Captain Mannion’s ear and Captain Mannion gets our ear…”

“Yeah, and he’ll get our asses if this doesn’t work,” said Razoni disconsolately.

“Don’t worry about it,” Jackson said. “It’ll work. Your plans always work. I have it on the highest authority.”

“I don’t like this kind of work anyway,” said Razoni. He looked around for his coffeecup, then poured more from the electric pot in the corner of the kitchen. “Tippi threatens to go to the
Times
with the story. Let him go to the
Times
. Who the hell cares? Only fags read the
Times
anyway.”

“The captain cares,” Jackson said patiently. “Think of all those people out there in this great teeming metropolis who would be outraged if they thought us cops let thugs run around loose, shaking down poor little restaurant owners.”

Razoni sighed and sank his tall lean frame into the chair across from Jackson. “It’s all
Miami Vice
’s fault,” he said.

“What’s
Miami Vice
’s fault?” Jackson asked.

“Everything is. People watch that show, those two fags running around, and they expect cops to do that shit. Cops don’t do that shit. Cops give tickets. Arrest people who already confess. Aaaah, screw it. When they come in, don’t screw it up, right? Please. I’m the manager and you listen, and when they threaten me or ask for money or something, then you come out and we show them the evidence and then tell them to stay out of here.”

“I’ve got the drill,” Jackson said wearily. “I just wish you had gotten a wire from our radio people at headquarters.”

“Oh, bullshit,” Razoni said. “You try to get anything out of them, you spend six weeks filling out forms. That is my own personal tape recorder and it works like a charm. All you got to do is point it and press the record button. Even you ought to be able to figure that out.”

“I’ll try to remember,” Jackson said blandly. “Ed, do me a favor.”

“Now, you’re going to ask me not to shoot anybody,” Razoni complained. “I’m getting tired of you always asking me not to shoot anybody. Shhh. I hear somebody. Now, listen, you stay out here and keep your eyes open. And remember, point that thing and press the record button, and don’t screw up because you be the witness.”

“I be the witness, I be the witness. Yassuh, yassuh.”

“Oh, shut up,” Razoni said. He stood and smoothed the back of his dark-blue mohair suit and walked through the kitchen door out into the main dining room of the small restaurant.

Jackson quietly removed the two cups from the table, in case anyone looked into the kitchen, then moved behind the partially open door.

“Sorry, gentlemen, we don’t open till four,” he heard Razoni say. Not bad, he thought. With Razoni, one never knew what to expect. If his temper got the better of him, he might just as easily have gone out, punched one man in the face in place of “hello,” and threatened to shoot the other man if he blinked.

“We know you’re closed,” Jackson heard a gruff voice answer. “Where’s Tippi?” Jackson pressed the record button on the tape recorder, which he held in his hand. Nothing happened. There was no whir, no movement. Jackson pressed the button again. Nothing. He looked at the recorder. It had no tape in it. The idiot had forgotten to put tape in it.

“Mr. Tippi’s not here today,” Razoni said blandly, his voice artificially loud to carry into the kitchen.

“And who are you?” the gruff voice asked.

“I’m Mister Randisi. His new partner,” Razoni said.

Behind the kitchen door, Jackson shook his head and stuck the small tape recorder in his pocket. From the corner of his eye, he saw something flashing, on and off, on and off. It was the phone on the wall behind him. Someone was calling and that might be Captain Mannion, their boss, who knew they were here.

Quietly, Jackson lifted the receiver and turned his back to the door. “Hello,” he whispered.

“Who’s that?” It was Captain Mannion’s voice.

“Jackson.”

“What’s the matter with you? You got a cold?”

“No. Can’t talk now.”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” Mannion said. “Well, listen to me then.”

Outside, in the dim dining room, shadowed by the heavy drapes drawn tight over its windows, Razoni sized up the two men who had entered the restaurant. The one in the brown pin-striped suit was the leader because he liked to smirk and pose a lot. The one in the cheap suit was the muscle. He liked to scowl. Razoni wanted to know where the leader had bought that brown suit.

“Do you know why we’re here?” asked the one in the pin stripes. Razoni wouldn’t have worn that dark shirt and white tie with that suit. That shirt and tie looked ridiculous. But the suit was nice.

“No,” said Razoni.

“Tippi’s supposed to have some money for us.”

“Well, I don’t know anything about that,” Razoni said. “What company are you with?”

“Listen, asshole,” the other one snapped. “We ain’t with no company. We ain’t with nobody but ourselves. And we told Tippi and we ain’t telling you again: if you think you’re running some restaurant around here, you need our services.”

“What kind of services?” Razoni asked.

“The kind of services that make sure that this don’t happen to you,” the man said. He stepped forward to one of the tables, picked up a chair that sat upside down atop it, and slammed the chair down on the table, breaking off one of the chair’s legs. “That kind of service,” the man repeated. The man in the brown pin-striped suit guffawed. “Charlie Ribs gives good service.”

“Oh, I see,” Razoni said.

“It just don’t happen to no chairs neither,” Charlie Ribs said. “Sometimes it happens to the people who own the chairs.”

“I got it,” Razoni said. “And you can prevent it?”

“Mr. Alcetta can,” the man said, nodding over his shoulder at the man in the brown pin stripes. “He can.”

“You can?” Razoni said.

Angelo (Sonny) Alcetta nodded.

“For how much?”

“Now you’re catching on,” the muscle man said.

Alcetta said, “Five percent of receipts, and there was supposed to be five big ones here today.”

Razoni said, “Big ones? You mean thousands? Of dollars? That kind of big ones?”

“We sure don’t mean rubber dicks, them kinds of big ones,” the muscle man said. “Yeah, thousands of dollars big ones.”

Razoni nodded. That should be enough to play out this game. A threat, a demand for five thousand dollars, a witness behind the door, a tape recording. Enough to work with.

“You’re both under arrest,” Razoni said, his hand reaching behind his back and drawing the snub-nosed .38 revolver from its holster on the back of his belt.

“Hey, what’s going on?” Sonny Alcetta said.

“I’m a police officer and you’ve just threatened me and tried to extort money from me. You’re under arrest.”

“Extort? Extort?” Alcetta said. “I don’t know nothing about no extort. Do you, Charlie? All I remember is you trying to get us to give you a bribe.” He smiled at Charlie, who said, “That’s right. That’s right. You was looking for a bribe.”

Alcetta smirked. “Your word against ours,” he said jauntily.

“Tough,” Razoni called over his shoulder. “You can come out now. It’s safe.”

Jackson ambled out of the kitchen slowly, moving to Razoni’s side. Even though Razoni was tall and broad-shouldered, he seemed like a stunted sapling next to Jackson’s tree-trunk six-foot-six and 245 pounds.

“Here’s my witness,” Razoni said. “He got it all on tape too.”

“Ed, I want to talk to you,” Jackson said.

Razoni waved at the men with his revolver. “You two sit down and don’t get cute.”

He waited until the two men had seated themselves, then walked behind Jackson toward the kitchen door.

“Well, what do you want?”

“I just don’t want you to threaten to play the tape for them,” Jackson said.

“Why not?”

“’Cause I didn’t get anything.”

“You what?” said Razoni, turning toward Jackson, a look of agony on his handsome angular face.

“You forgot to put tape in the machine,” Jackson said.

“You must have dropped it, you big clumsy oaf,” Razoni said. “There was tape in that machine.”

“There wasn’t any.”

“Well, the hell with it,” Razoni said. “We’re not going to book them anyway. And besides, you heard everything.”

“I didn’t hear anything,” Jackson said.

“I can’t believe you. Why not?”

“I was talking on the phone,” Jackson said.

“Oh, I see. That’s good. At least you weren’t wasting your time. You were talking on the phone. Good. And how’s everything home. Wife all right? The kid, the nasty one, he all right too?”

“I was talking to the captain,” Jackson said. “He said just finish up with these guys and go down and see him. He wanted to talk to us.”

“Well, for Christ’s sake, why didn’t you say so?” Razoni said. “You can’t ever get to the point.”

He walked away from Jackson toward the table where the two men sat, watching the detectives intently, trying to overhear what they had been saying.

Razoni holstered his pistol.

“I’ve decided to let you two men go,” Razoni said.

Sonny Alcetta smirked. “I thought you might. How much?”

“What did you say?” asked Razoni pleasantly.

“I said how much?”

“That’s what I thought you said.” The smile still on his face, Razoni raised his knee and kicked the man from the chair. He hit the floor with a thud.

“I don’t know what you do with other cops, but don’t try to bribe me,” Razoni said. He turned toward the other man. “And you called me an asshole,” he said.

Charlie Ribs raised his hands toward his face. “I didn’t mean anything by it,” he said.

“Good,” Razoni said. “I don’t mean anything by this.”

His hands darted forward, brushing aside the other man’s hands. He grabbed the collar of the man’s jacket and slammed his head forward onto the table.

The head hit with a thunk that echoed through the room.

“What do you think, Tough?” Razoni called out.

“Not loud enough,” Jackson said. His voice was a deep bass and resounded through the dark restaurant.

“That’s what I thought too,” Razoni said. He pushed the man’s head back, then slammed it down onto the table again.

“That’s better,” Jackson said.

Razoni nodded and released the man’s collar. He brushed imaginary lint from the sleeves of his suit jacket.

“Now, you two, listen,” he said. “You go back to whoever sent you and you tell them that Mr. Tippi is a very good friend of the police department and if they try to lean into him again, they will find themselves in very deep trouble.” He spoke slowly, his voice rising and falling for emphasis, as if lecturing young children. “Which is not to mention the trouble you two shits will be in because I will personally wipe up the streets with you. Is that very clear?”

There were two answering grunts.

“I don’t hear you,” Razoni chided. “Louder, please.”

“Yes.”

“Yes.”

“Good,” Razoni said.

Sonny Alcetta flinched as Razoni extended a hand toward him, but the detective simply picked up the billfold and looked through it. He examined the driver’s license. “Angelo Alcetta?” he said, disbelievingly. “You should be ashamed of yourself, doing this kind of work.” He took a hundred-dollar bill from the wallet’s cash compartment. “This is for the chair.” A business card slipped from the wallet with the bill and fell onto the table. Razoni looked at it.

“Patrick Tracy, Private Investigator,” he read aloud. “Angelo, what do you need a private detective for?”

“It’s personal,” Alcetta said.

“I’d hate my last memory of you to be that you were uncooperative,” Razoni said.