True Confessions (11 page)

“I heard.” She poured some cream into a spoon and let the Persian lick it. “Fuck him.”

Her hair had grayed and she had gained weight. There was a network of wrinkles under her eyes and her fingers were stained with nicotine. She had started turning out in San Diego at sixteen and she was running her own joint before she was twenty. Now she was a woman in a dirty nightgown going to fat. Except for the nicotine, she reminded him of Mary Margaret. He wondered if that had always been the attraction.

“You look like shit.”

She shrugged. “How’s the wife? Still in the crazy house?”

There it was, that fuck-you quality he had always liked.

“And the monsignor? I hear him on the radio. The Rosary Hour.’ KFIM at noon. He loves all that bullshit, I bet. The Latin. The Stations of the Cross. I bet he used to say a novena for you, every time I sucked you off.”

The matter-of-fact voice. She didn’t scare. Ever. He remembered telling her once he bet that she pissed ice water.

“You haven’t changed much,” he said.

“What’d you expect, Shirley Temple? I need you like I need another fuck.”

He said nothing. She would push again, he knew that.

“He plays a nice game of golf, your brother, Jack used to say.”

“Fuck you, Brenda.”

“You used to like to,” she said. She poured herself another cup of tea. “What’s this all about? I pay Vice good money not to roust me.”

“Murder One.”

She stifled a yawn. “Who?”

He told her about the body at 39th and Norton. The story did not seem to impress her.

“What’s that got to do with me?”

“She had a rose tattooed on her pussy. That ring any bells?”

“I don’t owe you any favors.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it.” The rust-colored cat leaped up on her lap. She stroked its neck until it began to purr. “You got a girl friend, I hear.”

“You do keep up.”

“She’s got a cunt like cashmere, I also hear.”

He flicked his hand across the table and hit her in the face. The cat scurried off her lap and hid under the faded brown couch.

“I think you get your cookies off doing that,” Brenda Samuels said quietly. There was a red welt growing on her face, but he knew she would never rub it. “I bet it gives you a boner. You got a little fellow, as I remember. I bet the only action it gets is from Five-Finger Mary.” She reached for a Camel. He noticed that her hands didn’t tremble. Being hit was a professional hazard. “You slap me around, you get a gen-u-ine hard-on, isn’t that right?”

“Something like that.” He hadn’t hit her because of what she had said about Corinne, he knew that. Corinne would know that, too. And Brenda. It was just that she was always in control. And always had been. Like all the women he had ever known. He lit a match with his thumb and held it out to her cigarette. “We need an ID on that girl.”

She drew deeply on the Camel. Two puffs and then the cigarette went into her teacup.

“I don’t know anyone with a tattoo.”

“Ask around.”

“Hooking?”

“Possibly,” he said. “You know anyone likes to cut?”

“Johnny Levene.”

“He’s in Folsom. He’s got cancer.”

“Good,” she said. “I’m glad.” He knew she meant it. If he thought one of his girls was holding out on him, Johnny, he liked to stick a heated coat hanger up her cunt, just to remind her who she was working for.

“Not a pimp. A John.”

“I’ll put the word out.”

He rose to leave. “Keep in touch.”

“Tom?”

He stopped. He knew she was going to ask again about the body on the fifth floor. She never did like loose ends.

“That guy upstairs, he’s got something to do with your brother, right?”

“How do you figure that?”

“Come on,” she said sharply. “I been running joints for twenty-five years. When four cops sneak a stiff down the back stairs of a whorehouse, you think I don’t know something funny’s going on? And you, you haven’t worked Vice since that night I was blowing you in the front seat of my car.”

She didn’t beat around the bush. “I told you. Murder One.”

“A guy gets a heart attack in the middle of a fuck isn’t Murder One. A stiff brings you down here, it’s got to have something to do with your brother. It was a bishop at least, I figure, that guy.”

There seemed to be no point in denying it. She would not believe him anyway. “A monsignor.”

She did not smile. She picked the soggy cigarette butt from the teacup and dropped it in an ashtray.

“Once a bagman, always a bagman.” She never raised her voice. “Except now you do it for your brother. He sings a swell mass, I hear. Got a voice like Buddy Clark.”

He moved toward her. She didn’t flinch.

“You ever wonder why you never got indicted?”

He stopped. So now I’m going to find out, he thought.

“He was doing too much business with your brother, Jack was. All those parochial schools he was building. It wouldn’t’ve looked good, you going on trial. You might’ve talked.” He thought, She’s really enjoying this. She’s waited a long time to say it. “He put the fix in downtown.”

So that was why Jack Amsterdam had thrown Brenda to the wolves. He needed a body. And she had kept her mouth shut. Probably because she didn’t want to end up in a dryer, he thought. No copping a plea. No pointing a finger at the chief contractor for the archdiocese. He watched the hard smile on her face. Debt canceled.

“Fuck you,” he said.

“I’ll keep in touch,” Brenda Samuels said.

The early-morning rain had stopped. Someone’s bound to find Mickey Gagnon soon, he thought. He wasn’t ready to call Des. Not just yet. Des, who played such a nice game of golf. According to Jack. Des, who was the reason he wasn’t in the cooler. Let Mickey wait. Fuck Des. And Brenda, too.

Once a bagman, always a bagman.

She always could get under his skin. He’d like to try her out with the rubber hose. He was very good with the rubber hose. He never hit anyone with it. At least when anybody was around. Bang it against the table in the interrogation room. And against the back of a suspect’s chair. That was usually enough. It scared the piss out of them. Sometimes more. Johnny Levene had crapped his pants. He’d like to try Brenda. Maybe Des, too.

Once a bagman, always a bagman.

Except now he was doing it for Des.

Paying off the debts of a Catholic childhood. He’d helped a lot of priests in the archdiocese out of the shit. Leon Jeanette, drunk driving, seventy miles an hour down Western Avenue, three cars sideswiped, his own totaled. Eddie Kieran, $7,700 of the Peter’s Pence Collection at Holy Trinity riding on a pair of treys. A word here, a word there. Charges dropped, case dismissed.

It was the only coin he had to offer.

Once a bagman, always a bagman.

He stopped on Broadway for a shine. Broadway Bates slapped polish on his shoes. Broadway Bates. 36 YEARS SAME LOCATION, BEST SHINE WEST OF CHICAGO. Broadway Bates had a tip.

“I hear she was a whore, Tom.” He pronounced it
whooor
.

Brenda’s words reverberated in Tom Spellacy’s ear. “A cunt like cashmere, I hear,” he said.

“That’s what I hear, too.”

The vendors on Broadway always had tips. The Wig Man. The Flower Man. The Tie Man. There were cops in the department whose only sources were the sidewalk vendors on Broadway. You’re a sidewalk vendor, you keep your eyes open, Ben Bass liked to say. A poodle pissed on a tree in Beverly Hills and Ben Bass was out checking The Wig Man, The Flower Man, The Tie Man. Broadway Bates knew a guy with a poodle, had a pair of Scotch-grain Florsheims needed a shine, down at the heels, no cuffs on the pants. From the cuffs down, Broadway Bates never made a mistake.

“Two weeks ago, Tom,” Broadway Bates said. He never took his eyes off the shoes. It occurred to Tom Spellacy that although Broadway Bates had been giving him a free shine for years, he probably could not pick him out of a lineup. All he ever saw was the top of his head. “A dame with a scuff mark on a pair of navy blue patent-leather pumps. Imitation-gold buckles, sharkskin heel guards. Sitting in the third chair. She wasn’t wearing no pants. It was like cashmere, I swear to God, no shit.”

Tom Spellacy buried his face in the
Express
. The headline on Howard Terkel’s story said, POLICE SEEK WEREWOLF SLAYER, and the subhead, in smaller type, MYSTERY CLERGYMAN CLEARED.

He swore.

“She’s the one, Tom,” Broadway Bates whispered. For the first time he noticed there was a knob on the back of Broadway Bates’s head.

He read.

“The modern counterpart of a medieval torture chamber,” Howard Terkel had written, “in which a slim, unidentified Mystery Beauty writhed for hours before her brutal murder by a maniacal ‘werewolf killer, was still being sought by homicide detectives today.

“An eminent local clergyman has definitely been ‘eliminated’ as a suspect, a police source also indicated.”

Tom Spellacy swore again.

Mystery Beauty. For a sudden, irrational moment, he thought it was all her fault. Brenda. Jack. Des. Once a bagman, always a bagman. A cunt like cashmere. Mickey Gagnon.

Fuck them all.

He dialed Des when he got to headquarters. The nun on the chancery switchboard had a voice like Sister Clarita in the fifth grade at Saint Anatole’s. (“Fighting in the toilet again, Thomas Spellacy. It’s the rubber hose for you.”) She asked who was calling.

“Homicide,” he said, remembering Sister Clarita.

“I beg your pardon.”

“LAPD.”

“For what purpose do you wish to speak to the monsignor?”

“I got a fistful of tickets to the Policemen’s Ball I want to get rid of.”

“I’m sure Monsignor Spellacy doesn’t want to bother himself with that. I’ll connect you with Father Barry.”

“Blow it out your ass, will you, Sister. Just get me Monsignor Spellacy.”

Des picked up the phone a moment later.

“What’d you say to Sister Margaret, got her so upset?” Des said.

“Basically I told her to blow it out her ass,” Tom said.

“Basically that’d do it,” Des said. “She doesn’t hear that much from the Mother Superior, I bet.”

“You talk to her next, you tell her I hope all her sons are Jesuits.”

He could hear Des breathing on the other end of the telephone. “I’ve been reading about you in the newspapers,” he said finally.

“They miss all the good stuff, the newspapers. All the solid citizens calling in with their clues. There was this guy yesterday, Sister Margaret might like to meet him, I think. He said he was Jay Cee’s younger brother Jim.”

“The Bible doesn’t mention him that I know of.”

“That’s what I told him was my impression. He had a birth certificate, he said, Jim. March 14, 29 B.C. And that wasn’t good enough for me, Jim said, I could go take a flying fuck, you’ll excuse the expression, Monsignor.”

“Excused,” Des said. “I read something about a Mystery Clergyman.”

“You think it was one of yours?”

“Just wondering.”

“Actually it’s your boss.”

“The Cardinal?”

“Yeah, you see, Howard Terkel asked me if there was anyone we had definitely crossed off, and I mentioned His Eminence.”

“Thanks,” Des said drily.

“You’d better watch that Howard, he’s an alibi-checking bastard.”

“His Eminence was at a dinner for the Italian-American League that night,” Desmond Spellacy said.

“Dinner with the ginneys,” Tom said. “Nice place to be, you want to get shot.” He knew Des was getting irritated. “He got home, Sister Margaret better’ve tucked him in tight, is all I got to say.” He fumbled for a cigarette and lit it. “He’ll drop it though, Howard, if the Cardinal says the funeral mass and gives him an exclusive.”

“You mean, if he’s not in the can,” Des said.

“The lawyers you got, Dan Campion and them, they’ll get him out on a writ easy.”

Des said nothing.

“It ought to be a new experience for him, Dan, going into court. He generally puts the fix in outside.”

Des still did not respond.

“Tell him the judge is the one in the black robe.”

“If you’re finished,” Desmond Spellacy said. With that voice I hate, Tom Spellacy thought. The don’t-call-me-I’ll-call-you voice. Now was the time to spring it on him.

“Listen, Des, before you hang up, I almost forgot the reason I called.”

He told Desmond Spellacy about Mickey Gagnon. There was a long silence when he finished.

“She could’ve been a relative,” Desmond Spellacy said finally.

“He’s got any nigger relatives, then she could’ve been a relative.”

“Or he might’ve been making a house call.”

“Des, when was the last time you put your pants over the back of a chair when you were making a house call? And wore black-and-white wing-tipped shoes. Pretend he made a perfect Act of Contrition and give him a great send-off.”