“He won’t tell you nothing anyway. I know.”
“If he doesn’t, he doesn’t. But I’d sure feel better.”
“See, I don’t want anybody to think I was talking behind their back. Especially this guy, he’s funny.”
“Kind of a tough monkey, huh?”
“Hey listen, I think I’ve said enough.”
“Jimmy, you ever take a polygraph?”
Jimmy Dunne pushed up in his chair, looking away from Vincent and then back to him. He said, “I don’t know how we got to where we are, but I’m not gonna say another word and have it come back to me, no-sir.”
“It won’t happen,” Vincent said. “All you have to decide, Jimmy, in your present frame of mind, would you rather have the cops holding you by the nuts or me?”
Yeah, rain helped business, the cab driver told Vincent. Rainy night, wind blowing. But otherwise, say you want to go a few blocks on Pacific you hop a jitney, six bits. You want a broad? They’re on the corner. Look, there’s one-got everything but a sign on her. Or you call an escort service. You walk to the casinos, the ones up at this end. Look. Golden Nugget… Tropicana… Playboy… Caesar’s. Then you got Bally’s, the Sands, the Claridge, Spade’s Boardwalk all close together…
What about after hours? Vincent asked him… After hours what, gambling? Twenty hours you don’t get enough? You can find it… They pulled up in front of Vincent’s hotel, the Holmhurst. You’re staying at a place, the driver said, the bar there, dealers go in there after work to party, unwind, five, six in the morning. Ask one of ’em where the action is after hours, they’ll tell you. If you can afford it.
Vincent was allowing himself a hundred bucks a day. Thirty for the room, not bad. But another thirty or forty if he had to rent a car. Eat cheap and drink beer… He liked the Holmhurst. It was homey, lot of furniture and paintings in the lobby, old leather sofas, flowery carpeting. Snug little cocktail bar. His third-floor room was okay, redecorated sometime during the past thirty years. He took off his raincoat-he’d had it on since the plane landed this morning-and dialed Dixie Davies’s home phone in Brigantine to ask him:
“The name Catalina mean anything to you?”
“You’re not talking about the island.”
“Or fashionable swimwear,” Vincent said. “Guy name Ricky Catalina was the doorman, the night before.”
“Oh, shit.”
“What do you mean, oh shit?” There was a silence on the line. “You understand what I’m saying? Not the night Iris was killed. Ricky was on the night before.”
“Who told you?”
“I’m not allowed to say.”
“Jimmy Dunne.”
“Jimmy’s afraid you’re gonna talk to him and get his name in the paper. You see any need to do that? You want Ricky, whoever Ricky is.”
“He’s a nephew of Salvatore Catalina. Sal the Cat, very high up. In fact, he’s the boss.”
“I never heard of him.”
“I’ll get you a Pennsylvania Crime Commission Report.”
“I understand what you mean-you’re talking about South Philadelphia, all those guys shooting each other to see who gets Atlantic City. I’ve been reading about it, Time magazine.”
“Something like twenty-two hits, killed different ways,” Dixie said, “car bombs, the usual; another half dozen attempted. It started out the young guys hitting the old guys, the mustaches, ’cause they wouldn’t get off their ass, make a move on the gambling. Then the guy who sent the hitter gets hit, the macaronis are shooting each other and it’s hard to tell who’s on whose side.”
“They should wear numbers,” Vincent said.
“You telling me. Six digits on a gray shirt.”
“I’ve read about it, but I don’t know the names,” Vincent said. “We got our own league in Miami. We got the wise guys, we also have the Cubans Fidel sent us.”
“We got Cubans,” Dixie said, “we got bikers handle the speed concession, brew methamphetamines out in the Pine Barrens, have their own chemical plants.”
“You have any Colombians?”
“I think I could look around, scare you some up,” Dixie said. “Sal Catalina, getting back, is South Philly. Except right now he’s in Talladega Correctional on a gun charge. They been hounding the shit out of him, finally got him on that convicted felon with a firearm. He had a High Standard Field King in his trunk, under the spare tire. Sal says the feds put it there-who knows? It’s only two years, you know, but it’s better than nothing. We got a tape of Sal and Ricky, you have to hear it. They’re in a toilet somewhere, I forget, men’s room of a restaurant. Sal’s giving Ricky the Zit a lecture on table manners. Guy eats like a fucking goat, Sal’s telling him never talk with your mouth full and chew each bite forty times, for your digestion. Ricky the Zit says, ‘I know how to fuckin eat, I been fuckin eatin all my life.’ You hear whack. Sal slaps him across the face. You hear Sal’s voice, very calm, always, ‘Ricky, listen what I’m telling you.’ “
“Ricky the Zit,” Vincent said.
“He was about twenty then, had a terrible complexion. It’s cleared up, but he’s still a mean little fucker. Sal, Sal thinks he’s George Raft. Expensive suits, or he’s got the shirt open all the way, the chains. Maybe just a little swishy. So he’s known as Sal the Cat or he’s Sally, or he’s Sal ‘Little Pussy’ Catalina. Only you call him that to his face he’ll kill you. Sal, though, you can talk to him, he’s not a bad guy. Ricky’s something else. Ricky the Zit. Ricky ‘the Blade’ Catalina. Ricky the Sickie. I wish somebody’d shoot him in this war they got going.”
“You’re telling me,” Vincent said, “he’s not ordinarily a part-time rent-a-cop, somebody’s doorman.”
“These guys,” Dixie said, “they’re into extortion, shylocking, prostitution, they take a cut from the bookies, any illegal gambling. Sal, they say, runs it from Talladega, on the phone. Ricky’s suppose to be a collector. Or you’re late with a payment they send Ricky.”
“So if he’s watching the door that night,” Vincent said, “he’s not upstairs collecting. Something else is going on, right? Would you say that, a party, they don’t want to be disturbed?”
“A party, a card game, a sex show, some type of off-premises gambling…”
“After hours?”
“Yeah, or less stringent rules than in the casinos. Guy might want to gamble in his underwear eating a cheese steak sub. Or they’re playing blackjack, guy might want to handle the cards. New Jersey, you can’t do it in the casinos, you can’t touch the cards. They got a lot more rules than out in Nevada.”
“You said ‘off-premises’…”
“Not in a casino, not regulated. They could still have the same equipment, but without all the rules.”
“Would a casino operate the game?”
“Not the casino, I doubt it. Somebody from the casino might,” Dixie said, “but you’re getting out of my area. I’m Major Crimes, homicide, any kind of sudden or unattended death. The wise guys, racketeering, narcotics, they come under the Economic Crimes section. And then anything in the casinos, cheating, stealing, that’s handled by the DGE, Division of Gaming Enforcement. They’re state cops.”
“Iris’s death was fairly sudden.”
“That’s why I’m on it.”
“So you’re gonna talk to Ricky,” Vincent said, “not give him to somebody else.”
“No, I’m gonna talk to him first thing in the morning,” Dixie said, “if he’s still around. Bring along a couple of guys to hold him.”
Vincent said, “Dix?” He was going to mention Linda’s coat, but then hesitated. Maybe he’d better wait. “Never mind, I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”
After he had another talk with Linda.
She had warmed up a little in the cab, smiled a couple of times. There was hope. He liked her and had a feeling she liked him. But he also had a feeling-one of those good ones that kept you wide awake-she knew a lot more than she was telling. Most of the ride, from the funeral home to Spade’s, she was very quiet.