“Who wants to know?”
I sat down across from him without answering. He didn’t like that; it made him even more nervous. “Hey,” he said, “I’m expectin’ somebody, man.”
“I’m here now.”
“Who’re you? What the hell you want?”
“Rick told me I could find you here.”
“Yeah? Rick who?”
“I’m in no mood for games, Stevie.”
He started to slide out of the booth. I leaned toward him, putting my hands flat on the scarred tabletop. What he saw in my face decided him to stay put; he blinked several times, as if I were an apparition he was trying to make disappear. He was afraid of me, but it was nothing personal. He’d always be afraid of anyone bigger and stronger, any sort of authority figure.
He said again, with a whiny note in his voice, “What the hell you want?”
“The answers to some questions. Then I’ll leave you alone to make your deals.”
“I dunno what you’re talkin’ about, deals.”
“Grass, crank, speed, whatever your specialty is.”
He jerked his gaze around, but nobody else was listening. “Jesus,” he said, “keep your voice down. I dunno what you’re talkin’ about, I told you.”
I swallowed a mouthful of beer. Out of the bottle; I wouldn’t have used the glass that had come with it unless it had been sterilized first. “First question,” I said. “Guy about forty, big, bald, bushy eyebrows, breath that says he likes onions. Know him?”
“No.”
“Don’t lie to me, Stevie. No lies, no bullshit.”
“I ain’t lying, man. I don’t know nobody looks like that.”
I was watching him closely. The nervous frown appeared genuine; the denial sounded genuine. “All right. Second question: How long since you’ve seen Jay Cohalan?”
“Who’s Jay Cohalan?”
“What’d I just say about lies and bullshit? We both know Cohalan used to date your sister Doris.”
“... Oh, yeah. Him.”
“How long since you’ve seen him?”
“Long time. Year and a half, maybe. Good fuckin’ riddance.”
“Why good riddance?”
“You gonna make trouble for him, I hope?”
“Maybe. Why do you care?”
“He jammed up my sister, that’s why.”
“Jammed her up how?”
“Never told her he was married for one thing,” Niall said. “Hit her hard when she found out. She was in love with the bastard, Christ knows why.”
“What else?”
He leaned forward and lowered his voice to a near whisper. “He got her hooked on crystal meth. That’s nasty shit, man. Took her a while to get straight again.”
“He get it from you?”
“Me?” Niall’s mouth twitched; it made the long nose hair dance obscenely. “You think I’d supply shit like that to a guy going around with my own sister?”
“Where’d he get it then. Charlie Bright?”
“Who?”
“You heard me. Charlie Bright.”
“I don’t know nobody named Bright.”
Straight answer, I thought. “How about Annette Byers?”
“Her, neither.”
“She’s Cohalan’s new girlfriend. Jammed up on crank, too.”
“Yeah? His doing?”
“That’s right,” I lied.
“Yeah, well, that asshole come sucking around me after Doris dumped him, wanted me to sell him some crank. You believe it? After what he done to her?”
“What’d you tell him?”
“Fuck off, that’s what I told him. He knew I don’t mess with that shit. No crank, no crack, I ain’t that stupid. But he wouldn’t go away. Offered me fifty for a name, a connection. So I fixed him up. Yeah, I fixed him good.”
“How?”
“Sent his ass to Jackie Spoons. You know Jackie Spoons?”
“Enforcer for Nick Kinsella, isn’t he?”
“Used to be, but he branched out three, four years ago. Rough trade, Jackie Spoons. Hooked in with some real bad guys.”
“And you sent Cohalan to him.”
“Give him Jackie’s name. What happened after that, I don’t know. I hope he got jammed up like he jammed up Doris.”
“Where can I find Jackie Spoons?”
“Can’t tell you that. He moves around, you know?”
“Point me to somebody who might know.”
“I can’t, man. Guys like Jackie, they’re outta my league. I’m strictly lightweight. You play in that league, you can end up dead real easy.”
“Okay. One more name and I’m gone. Dingo.”
“Never heard it.”
“Think a little. Dingo.”
He thought and said again, “Never heard it.”
I took another swallow of beer and then slid out of the booth. Niall looked relieved, but that didn’t stop him from opening his mouth.
“Listen,” he said, “what’s this all about? Who are you, anyway?”
“You really want to know?”
His eyes flicked over my face, flicked away again in a hurry. “Maybe not.”
“Definitely not. You don’t want to play in my league, either.”
I left him lighting another coffin nail with twitchy fingers. Small man, small mind, lightweight in every respect. The kind destined for failure in any league he played in, even the low minors where he was playing now.
11
IN THE CAR, DRIVING AGAIN.
Jackie Spoons. I’d seen him twice, briefly; exchanged maybe half a dozen words with him the second time. But I remembered him well enough. He was not a man you were likely to forget. Big, very big: four or five inches over six feet, weight around 250 and not much of it fat. Ex-heavyweight pug, determined iron pumper. More than just hard-ass muscle, though, or so the rumor had it. Shrewd and ruthless, a deadly combination in his rough-trade world. It didn’t surprise me that he’d branched out into drug dealing or that he’d picked the crystal meth crowd to join. They were the hardest of the hardcases, most of them ex-cons, many of them killers convicted and otherwise. The gangs that controlled the crack cocaine trade were lethal, but for the most part they preyed on each other; their outside victims were usually innocent bystanders who happened to get in the way of a stray drive-by bullet. The crystal meth bunch were even more lethal, the difference being that they had a reputation for indiscriminate slaughter. Anybody who crossed them or got in their way, for any reason, was fair game.
Baldy wasn’t Jackie Spoons. Jackie was too big, too tall, and the last time I’d set eyes on him he’d worn a thick Fu Manchu mustache and had a pile of wavy black hair. He wouldn’t have needed a gun to do the job on me, either. He’d have gotten me in a chokehold and snapped my neck with one quick twist. He had arms like Popeye’s and hands like catcher’s gloves. Jackie Shovels would have been a more appropriate sobriquet. But the name Spoons hadn’t come from the size of his hands; it was a childhood nickname pinned on him because his father, a Greek immigrant and amateur musician, had made music with ordinary spoons and tried to teach his son to do the same. Jackie’s real name was something like Andropopolous.
Nick Kinsella. I knew him a little; he wasn’t Baldy, either. He owned a place on San Bruno Avenue, off Bayshore west of Candlestick Park, called the Blacklight Tavern, but that wasn’t his primary source of income. He’d made his pile in the time-honored trade of loan-sharking. Another rough-trader: he charged a heavy weekly vig, and if you missed a payment or two you could expect a visit from one of his enforcers — big, bad boys like Jackie Spoons. Once, years ago, I’d tracked down and brought back a bail-jumper for a bondsman named Abe Melikian. The jumper was somebody Kinsella had a grudge against; he liked me for putting the guy back in the slammer. Any time I needed a favor, he’d said to me at the time. I’d taken him up on it once, when I had no other way to get certain information. Maybe my credit was still good for one more favor.