“Understood,” I said. “You get the silent partner’s name?”
“Yeah, and you’ll love it: John Smith. Lives upstate somewhere. Address is a P.O. Box. Look, Captain, I didn’t dig deep — this was a friendly conversation, off the cuff... and I could tell if it got serious, the charity rep might clam up.”
“It can be tracked....”
“You’re the detective.”
“Mr. Boyle, you’re not a bad one yourself.”
Two days, and 4428 would be rubble and dust.
Two days for something to happen, if that old pile of brick and wood and glass really meant a damn thing.
But two days was also manageable. I could set up an operation within those parameters, no problem.
Which is how I ended sitting at old Bessie’s window. I didn’t hang out over the sill — she had taken her red velvet elbow pillow with her, and anyway I didn’t want to be seen. This was surveillance.
And like all surveillance duty, it had its drawbacks. The stripped shell of the tiny old apartment, with its faded floral wallpaper and ancient creaky floors, stunk with decades of cooking smells. I never saw a rat, but I could hear them in the walls and halls, tiny claws scratching, scurrying.
But I was looking for a bigger rat, name of Bucky Mohler.
Mohler had been a gang kid coming up strong, back in the old days, an up and comer who suddenly up and went. The old gal who’d sat in this very window had seen his return, and I hadn’t believed her at first.
I believed her now.
With no heat in the building, and the fall air turning from crisp to cold, I was glad to be in a black corduroy jacket over a black sweater. T... .45 was on the hip of my black jeans. I looked half cop, half ninja.
The dark attire was strictly in case Bucky showed up after sundown. But I doubted he would. With the street damn near dead, and only a few street lamps to light the way, Bucky returning in the daylight made sense.
I intended to put in the long day shift myself, seven am till nine pm. For nightshift duties, I had lined up retired brother cop Pudgy Gillepsie for the first night, and an off-duty Sgt. Davy Ross himself for the second one.
The officials were in the know, but I was playing a hunch. Or call it an educated guess, yet none of the evidence that provided that education would be enough to get the NYPD or the Feds on the front line. A phone call, though, would bring the cavalry on the run....
I didn’t mind a long surveillance. I’d done it enough times, and for every splashy shoot-out the papers had written up from my so-called exploits, there were a hundred days of dull damn tedium. If pressed, I’ll admit my bones and muscles did some complaining. With sixty looming up ahead like a speed limit sign, I was bound for a little discomfort.
Luckily I’d been able to improvise. A few abandoned items of furniture were to be found in Bessie’s building, including a well-worn lounger that a thrift shop would’ve junked, but it still allowed me to sit looking out that window at the Padrone building like I was watching football or an old movie on the tube.
As the guy who was throwing this party, I had brought along a Styrofoam ice chest filled with Cokes and Millers. Also a grocery bag filled with bags of chips and four plastic-bagged sandwiches — Swiss cheese and pastrami from a good deli. Wanted to do right by my pals helping me out, plus I had to eat, too.
I spoke to Bettie by cell phone in the morning and she reported nothing suspicious. On the other hand, nothing got past her — she was aware that I had Darris Kinder and Joe Pender keeping an eye on her.
“Darris stopped by yesterday morning,” she said, “and Joe came by in the evening — just saying hello, seeing if I needed anything. But it’s more than that, isn’t it, Jack?”
“Yes,” I said. “Something’s about to happen.”
“What?”
“Tell you the truth, I’m not exactly sure. I know the New York end is coming together. That young computer tech at Credentials, twenty years ago — he was a kid named Bucky Mohler.”
“I wish I could say that name means something to me.”
“That’s a stray piece that may float back yet. But it was him, all right — your friend Florence said the computer tech had a ‘cowboy’ name. Well, when I was a kid, there used to be a cowboy actor called Buck Jones.”
“Who?”
“Before your time, kitten. Before your time even twenty years ago... but not Florence’s, and that’s what she meant, I’m sure. Buck. Bucky.”
“Jack... you say twenty years ago, this Bucky worked where I worked, at Credentials, on computers. But what does that have to do with today?”
“I’m not sure. I think the answer is right here in the big city.” I looked out the window at the Padrone building, old and not quite proud. “And when I get it, I’ll fly home to you.”
“Fly fast, Jack.”
“Baby, I won’t even need a plane.”
Phone calls broke the monotony of the stakeout. Some I made, some were incoming, like the one from police scientist Paul Burke.
“Got something on that carved ivory hash pipe, Captain.”
“Great! Don’t tell me you actually got a print off that thing?”
“I actually got a print off that thing — a partial. But that was enough to make a match through other means. The print likely belongs to a convicted drug dealer, a sterling citizen name of Romero Suede.”
“I’ve heard of him.”
“Oh? He’s got a rep as a mean one. Questioned on several murders, but never charged. Served his drug-bust time, no outstanding warrants — but also no current address.”
I knew what Romero Suede’s current address was: Garrison Properties, Florida.
“How I know this partial is likely Suede’s,” Burke was saying, “comes from a letter in his file. The warden commending Suede for his ‘artistic endeavors’ — wood and ivory carving.”
“The guy is carving out hash pipes in stir and the warden commends him for it?”
Burke chuckled. “Well, Jack, the prison system is trying to get its charges ready for the outside world again.... By the way, there were traces of high-quality hash in that pipe.”
“Thanks, Paul.”
“Always happy to help a retiree enjoy his sunshine years.”
“And you could stick it where the sun don’t shine, buddy.”
He laughed, so did I, and we rang off.
That afternoon, between cold Millers, I spoke to Captain Kinder.
“You got Bettie covered, Darris?”
“Damn straight. Working the dayshift myself, Jack. And Joe is on nights. Plus, we have every ex-cop on your street, and the street behind you, alerted that something may go down and soon. All they do is nod. They don’t even ask what.”
I grinned at the cell. “Old firehorses just need to hear the bell, Darris. They don’t ask where the fire is, just follow the smoke.”
“One thing I’m keeping a close eye on, Jack, is our friendly neighborhood ice cream trucks. We’ve had two trolling Sunset today.”
“How much ice cream does a retirement village need, anyway?”
He grunted. “It’s not so suspicious that I can collar ’em or anything. We’ve always got a lot of grand-kiddies visiting down here, and for the Golden Age crowd, there’s nostalgia value in buying ice cream goodies off an old-fashioned truck. These guys really do have plenty of customers to justify their presence.”
“I think you’ll find those trucks are hauling more than ice cream.”
“What, drugs? You don’t think our fellow ex-coppers are buying their prescription drugs on the black market, do you? Weed for glaucoma patients, maybe?”
He sounded like he wasn’t sure if he was kidding or not.