Too Old a Cat (Trace 6) (22 page)

“Look at it this way, Ed. It beats doing traffic duty.”

“Serving warrants is the same as doing traffic duty,” Razoni said. “It’s for somebody with no experience.”

“Or somebody on the shit list,” Jackson said.

“It’s all right if they want to punish you, but why they’ve got to drag me down with you I’ll never know,” Razoni said. He glared at Jackson belligerently as if the huge black man were the source of all Razoni’s problems, past, present, and future.

“It’s just Captain Mannion’s way of protecting us,” Jackson said. “Keep us out of sight until things blow over.”

“But, dammit, that’s what’s wrong. We were supposed to find that little fagola and we found her. If they leave us alone, we’d solve that freaking lizard murder too. I saw those two bastards, what’s their name, Gault and Gorman, those two precinct bulls up at headquarters, and they did everything but spit at me.”

“What’d you do?” Jackson said.

“I spit at them. What the hell else could I do? I’ll tell you, Tough, they
knew
we were going on warrants. Everybody knows. We’re humiliated,” Razoni said.

“Our day will come again,” Jackson said philosophically. “Then we’ll get even.”

“You bet your butt we will. They’ll have some job nobody else can do and they’ll have to give it to us and we’ll do it, and then somebody will get mad at you for something and I’ll take the blame,” Razoni said. “Stop all the talk. Just keep your eyes open for”—he looked at a card on his lap—“Pedro González. Can you beat that? Trying to find Pedro González in this town is like trying to find Booker T. Washington.”

“You’re behind the times,” Jackson said. “This year it wouldn’t be hard to find a Booker T. Washington. I’d hate to be looking for a Muhammad X, though. There he is.”

Casually, Jackson slid the car into a parking spot, a half-block down the street from a neighborhood tavern.

“Where?” said Razoni.

“He was in the doorway of the saloon. He’s little.”

“Of course, he’s little. Did you expect Pedro González to be playing tackle for the Jets?” Razoni was getting out of the car. He started walking casually back toward the corner.

The small man in powder-blue shirt and slacks who stood in the doorway of the tavern saw the big hard-faced man coming toward him and instinctively ducked back inside the tavern.

Over his head, Razoni waved toward Jackson, then went into the bar. The room was crowded and reverberated with the sounds of Spanish chatter, which always had sounded to Razoni like people yelling “Meeta, meeta, meeta.”

He found room at the bar. While he waited for the bartender, he watched two old men playing dominoes at a table across from the bar. Each one slammed his domino down as if it were the delivery of an insult.

They talked as they played. “Meeta, meeta, meeta.”

The bartender arrived in front of Razoni. “
Señor
?” he said.

“Right,” said Razoni. “
Sí
. Pedro González. See Pedro González? I look for Pedro González. Meeta, meeta, meeta meeta.”

The bartender looked Razoni over carefully. “I think I saw Pedro go into the back.” He motioned toward a large back room where people sat sipping drinks and playing dominoes and dice.

“Muchas thank you,” Razoni said. He walked toward the broad flower-bordered archway entrance to the back room. He stood there looking around at the tables. Ten seconds. Twenty seconds. Of course, Pedro González was not there. Thirty seconds. Forty seconds. Enough. Enough time for Pedro González to have scooted out of the men’s room where he was hidden and to have run out the front door behind Razoni.

He turned and walked back toward the bar’s entrance.

“You find him, señor?” asked the bartender, eyes twinkling. The others at the bar chuckled.

“No, Fidel, I didn’t find him because I didn’t look in the men’s room. But I’ll find him out front. Meeta, meeta, meeta.”

He waved at the confused bartender and strolled out the front door where the small Puerto Rican in the powder-blue shirt and slacks was struggling in the massive arms of Jackson.

“Pedro González,” Razoni said. “It is my great pleasure to inform you that you are under arrest.”

“Foke you, peeg.”

“Listen to him, Tough. He can’t even say pig. If you people are going to come to this country and use up all the black folks’ welfare money, why don’t you learn to talk right?” He sounded more interested than annoyed and paused as if truly waiting for an answer.

There was none so, each holding a wrist, they walked Pedro González back to the car. Razoni pushed the small man into the front seat between the two detectives.

“Why you peek me up?”

“We peek you up because there is warrant for joo arrest,” said Razoni. “Joo no pay the two thousand dollar in traffic teekets. Now shut joo mouth, you make me seek.”

Three blocks away was a precinct house, and Jackson waited while Razoni went in and turned Pedro González over to the desk sergeant, along with the warrant and a few thousand well-chosen words about how, if the precinct detectives were more efficient, major criminal masterminds like Pedro González would not be free to walk the streets, eating up the time of important detectives who had other things to do.

When Razoni got back outside, Jackson was not in the car. He returned after a few minutes and Razoni said, “Well?”

“I called the captain. The precinct bulls, Gault and Gorman, want to talk to Karen Marichal and Abigail Longworth about the Swami’s murder.”

“Good. I hope they fry,” Razoni said.

“Who? The girls or the detectives?”

“All of them,” Razoni said. “They’re all fags.”

“God, I hate this traffic,” Trace said.

“Will you stop complaining?” Chico said. “You’ve done nothing but complain since we got back to New York.”

“I have very carefully not complained since we got back to New York,” Trace said. “But I wouldn’t mind if you’d take out your gat and jump out and shoot about ten thousand of these bastards. We’re going to be late.”

“Don’t worry,” Chico said. “Sarge will wait for us, and besides, those planes from San Juan are always late. You know what I would have done if I were Angelo Alcetta?”

“Kill your wife with a bat instead of a club?”

“Don’t get smart. I think if I wanted to kill my wife, I wouldn’t have parked my very identifiable car right in front of her apartment for one and all to see.”

“No,” Trace said. “That’s what you wouldn’t do if you were Angelo Alcetta with
your
brains. But Angelo Alcetta with
his
brains might very well have done just that.”

“It doesn’t ring true,” she said. “Nobody’s that stupid.”

“Angelo Alcetta is.”

When Sarge saw them waiting for him in the terminal building, he dropped to the floor and kissed the ground like the Pope returning to Rome after a world tour.

He had no luggage. “I left it on the ship with your mother,” he said. “What the hell, they were all her clothes anyway.” He hugged Chico and said to Trace, “Had an interesting few days, haven’t you?”

“You know me. Do anything for a buck. I figured being a Mafia private eye would probably be good for business.” Besides, the ex called to invite me to dinner. Maybe if it gets in the papers that I work for the mob, she’ll leave me alone.”

Sarge opened the windows of the car as they drove back to New York. “Oh, what a pleasure to breathe dirt again. I’ve inhaled so much salt air in the last two days, my legs are swollen.”

Trace and Chico filled him in on the events since he’d gone. He started to chuckle as Trace told him of the run-in with Razoni and Jackson, who thought that Trace was following them.

“That doesn’t seem so funny to me,” Trace said. “The one’s a homicidal maniac, if I ever saw one.”

“Just funny your running into them,” Sarge said.

“You know them?”

“I’ve heard of them. They’re special cops.”

“Sure are,” Trace said. “Homicidal maniac cops.”

Sarge shook his head. “They work out of the commissioner’s office. I know the guy who works there, Marv Mannion. We were rookies together. And this Razoni and Jackson, I’m told, get everything nobody else in the department can handle.”

“It’s hard to square Razoni that I met with somebody who can do something,” Chico said. “All that lunatic does is yell and complain.”

“Just telling you their reputation,” Sarge said.

Trace got lost with the two of them shouting directions, so instead of going back to Sarge’s house in Queens, they wound up in Manhattan. Sarge offered to buy them dinner at Bogie’s and before Trace could say a word, Chico had accepted for the two of them.

“Sam Silverand?”

The young man who answered the door was rail-thin, acned, and had scarecrow hair. He nodded, and his Adam’s Apple jumped up and down nervously, like a neurotic elevator trying desperately to find a floor it liked. His eyes were bloodshot.

“I’m Detective Jackson and this is Detective Razoni. We’d like to talk to you.”

“Sure. About what?”

“Swami Salamanda,” Jackson said.

“Oh. Okay. What do you want to know?”

“Can we come in?” Jackson said.

“Sure. Sorry. Come on in.”

He led them into a large one-room apartment that looked as if it had been rented to Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. The right half of the apartment was a stove, a refrigerator, a small kitchen table, a couch that opened into an unmade bed, and a television set, all of it looking as if none of it had been cleaned since he had moved in. The left side of the apartment was a different story: a whole wall of complicated-looking camera equipment, console boards, and TV monitors. It looked as neat as an IBM laboratory.

Jackson took out his notebook as Silverand gestured then to the kitchen table, which he cleaned by lifting up the plastic tablecloth with everything in it and depositing it all in the sink.

“Can I get you something? All I’ve got is coffee,” the young man said.

“Not in this place,” Razoni said.

Silverand shrugged. As the two detectives sat down, he went to the stove and lit the gas under a pot of water. “I’m going to have some anyway. What can I do for you?”

“We understand you took some TV film of the Swami the day he died,” Jackson said.

“Tape,” Silverand said, and when Jackson looked up, he said, “TV tape. Half-inch. Not film.”

“Right,” Jackson said. “Do you have it?”

“No. I sold it to United Broadcasting. I took it up there and they liked it so they bought it from me.”

“But they never showed it?” Jackson said.

“That’s right.”

“Why?” Jackson asked.

“I don’t know.”

“That must have been pretty disappointing.”

Silverand shook his head and gave a slow wide-mouthed grin.

“No. It got me a job.”

“How’d that happen?” Jackson said.

“I got a call from Theodore Longworth himself. He’s the boss at United Broadcasting.”

“A faggot,” Razoni said.

Jackson glared at him and nodded to Silverand. “Go on, please.”

“Well, he called and said that he’d reviewed the tape—he reviews all news tapes—and while the technical quality was a little low, he thought it showed real promise and he offered me a job as a cameraman. It’s what I always wanted.”

“Were you a follower of the Swami’s?” Jackson asked.

Silverand shook his head.

“But you shot a lot of film…excuse me, tape, there, didn’t you?”

“I was there a lot,” Silverand admitted. “A lot of girls there. You know, House of Love and all.”

“You went over there to score?” Razoni said.

“Cheaper than singles bars.”

“Did you know Sister Glorious?”

“Yes,” Silverand said. “The nicest lady, and beautiful. I told her I wanted to do a documentary on the Swami so she let me film there. None of the raunchy stuff where everybody was playing grab-ass but everything else.”

“You know anybody who might want to kill her?” Jackson said.

“No. The paper said her husband killed her,” Silverand said. “What a jerk he must be.”

“Always checking,” Jackson said with a shrug. “Just to make sure our case is solid.”

Silverand made a cup of instant coffee. He spilled half of it on the kitchen-sink top.

“Did you notice anything unusual the day Salamanda got killed?” Jackson asked.

“No. A usual thing. They did it every Sunday, welcome new members and all.”

“The girl who brought in the roses, you got her on tape?” Jackson asked, writing in his notebook.

“Sure. I shot the whole ceremony, but when the Swami turned up his heels, I split and came back here to check out the tape. It was real good stuff, I thought.”

“And now United Broadcasting has it?”

Silverand sipped his coffee, then shook his head. “It got destroyed. Longworth told me. That’s one of the reasons he felt so bad, I think, and offered me the job. Do you know how long I’ve wanted to work for a TV station?”

Razoni was standing at the TV console board, looking through a pile of tapes.

“Detective, excuse me. Please be careful over there. All that equipment’s real delicate.”

“Hey, pal. I never break anything,” Razoni said. He was looking through a stack of eight-by-ten photos.

“So there’s no way for us to see this film and the girl who brought in the flowers,” Jackson said.

“I’ve got a picture of her.”

“I thought you said the tape was destroyed.”

“It was. But before I took it up to the station I made a couple of prints from it in case nobody wanted the tape. I thought I might be able to sell a couple of the stills to one of the newspapers or something.”

“Did you try that?”

“No. Mr. Longworth told me that all the stuff on the tape was theirs exclusively when he offered me the job.”

“You still have the still photos?” Jackson asked.

Silverand walked across the room to where Razoni was looking through a stack of glossy photographs.

“All you take is pictures of women,” he said.

“Some people take pictures of trees. I like women.”

“Me too,” Razoni said as Silverand took the stack of photos from his hands. He looked through them quickly, then brought out two.

“Here,” he said, walking back and handing them to Jackson. “That’s her coming through the curtain and that’s her sprinkling the flowers on the stage.”

“Dear sweet Abigail,” Jackson said to Razoni.

“We knew that,” Razoni said.

“You’re not going to get these published or anything, are you?” Silverand asked. “It’ll cost me my job.”

“No,” Jackson said. “It’s just for the investigation. They’ll be returned when we’re done.”

“I guess that’s all right, then,” Silverand said.

Outside, Jackson said, “Very strange.”

Razoni said, “Not strange. Ridiculous. That ugly guy thinking he could score.”

“I’m not talking about that,” Jackson said. “I’m talking about Longworth getting that tape and seeing his daughter killing the Swami, and then he destroys the tape and he calls the cops to secretly find his daughter.”

“I think the bastard ought to be booked for destroying evidence,” Razoni said. “Those faggots will do anything to keep another faggot out of jail.”

“It’s his daughter,” Jackson said.

“Who cares?” Razoni said. “All I know is he busted our chops and he knows damn well where his daughter is. She’s out killing lizards.”

“I think we ought to do something with these pictures,” Jackson said.

“Like what?” Razoni said.

“Like send them to Gault and Gorman, those two cops that are handling the case.”

“Good,” Razoni said. “But do it anonymously. I can’t stand those bastards.”

“Of course, anonymously,” Jackson said with a grin. “Is there any other way?”