“Iris told her friend, the Puerto Rican.”
“But she stayed in the apartment…”
“She was there with the guy two nights in a row. She told her friend about the first night and said she had to go back, but it was okay, the guy gave her five hundred bucks. Even though he lost about a hundred thousand.”
“The guy spend the night with her?”
“The first night-I don’t know. She got home about five.”
“The second night,” Vincent said, “she stayed. She was there all day. Let’s say she was. And somebody came back to see her that night.”
“Or somebody stayed with her,” Linda said.
“Who was there? Who brought the Colombian?”
“Well, he had a suite at Spade’s. They flew him up from Miami in their private jet, comped the room, meals, everything. If you can afford to lose a hundred grand, Vincent, it’s all on the house.”
“We talking about Donovan now? He set it up?”
“Or Jackie Garbo. He runs the casino. But Donovan would have to know about it, it’s his hotel.”
“Was Donovan at the apartment?”
“I don’t know, it’s possible.”
“Or Jackie-what’s the guy’s name, Garbo?”
“Yeah, it’s more likely he was there.”
“Who else?”
“I don’t know.”
“Local people?”
“What do you mean, local people?”
“Guy by the name of Ricky Catalina?”
“Never heard of him.”
Vincent eased back in the chair, finished his drink. He saw the condominium in Ventnor, the carpeted lobby, Jimmy Dunne’s neat desk and wondered what Ricky looked like-wanting to picture him in that lobby. Then wondered what a loan-shark collector would be doing there, acting as doorman. The lookout. Just a guy in the ranks, one of the soldiers. But he wouldn’t be there unless someone he worked for was upstairs. Vincent began to see a connection that made sense. The wise guys doing business with the Colombian; he was their supplier. They partied together when he came to town, arranged for Donovan or Garbo to bank an illegal game where Iris had to take her clothes off to bring the guy luck. Vincent was thinking he would like to try his luck with the Colombian, he sure would. If it wasn’t too late. They could disappear on you. He had known a few Colombians who posted half-million dollar bonds and took off in the night. It was only money. What this town was all about, money. Nothing else.
Linda was staring at him. She said, “There was another girl there.” Staring at him with those painted eyes. He watched her raise her glass and hesitate, looking off now.
Vincent waited.
“But I can’t think of her name. I know who she is, I saw her in the lounge with Jackie. She was Miss Oklahoma about five or six years ago.”
“Take your time,” Vincent said.
Teddy could see his mom’s scalp her curlers were turned so tight, wound up in thin tufts of her gold-colored hair. Coming home he’d thought it was a wig her hair was so bright. She told him, no, she still had her crowning glory, she had to just touch it up now and then. He said to her bird face glistening with beauty cream, covers up to her chin, “ ‘Night, Mom. Don’t let the bedbugs bite you,” closed her door and went out to the living room wondering if you could taste chloral hydrate in warm milk.
Get some up in Boystown, New York Avenue, those cute guys had anything you wanted, knockout drops, percs, street ludes, all kinds of meth.
Buddy cocked his green-and-orange head and stepped sideways along his perch saying, “Magic! Magic!” his parrot voice sounding like a movie cartoon witch.
Teddy said, “ ‘Ey, Buddy, ‘ey, Buddy boy. How’s my old buddy? I bought a handicraft bird looks just like you this PR girl was suppose to deliver, but I guess she never made it. You coulda played with it, Buddy, had yourself a little playmate.”
Buddy stepped sideways to the edge of the perch stained white and bluish green with parrot shit. His mom could offer Buddy a sunflower seed from her puckered mouth murmuring, “Kisser mom, kisser mom,” and Buddy would peck the seed out of the red goo of her lips, crack it and eat it without thinking twice. Teddy, all he had to do was approach the stand-there in the living room on spread newspapers-even offer a peanut, and Buddy would shit and become edgy. Why?
“ ‘Ey, I ain’t gonna eat you. Here, walk onto my hand… Okay, don’t then. I don’t care. The heck’re you nervous about?” Teddy hunched down to look into Buddy’s eyes as Buddy side-stepped back the other way now. It would show if Buddy saw something in his eyes. Did he? It was hard to tell with a parrot.
He had looked into the eyes of convicts, wondering if they saw something, and had got propositioned, proposed to and finally picked by a big colored guy, Monroe Ritchie, to be his old lady. But he had never seen the look in any con’s eyes like the look he had seen in the cop’s-that morning when they woke him up busting through the door and the cop held the gun in his face.
Not a look of hate exactly, it was more a look of knowing something.
Then saw the look in the cop’s eyes again, on the car ferry down in Puerto Rico, this time the cop holding the curved end of a walking stick in his face. This was like confirming it, he hadn’t just imagined the cop saw something that first time. No, seven and a half years later the cop still saw it.
Teddy said to Buddy, “How would you like it? Guy thinks he knows more about you than you do? Like he can look in your head and see things that make him want to blow your head right off. I mean a guy that shows he wants to kill you. What would you do, let him?” Teddy hunched in close to Buddy. “I make you nervous, don’t I? Huh? Would you like to peck my eyes out so I can’t look at you no more? Would you? ‘Ey, then you know what it feels like.”
He had watched Monroe Ritchie’s eyes cloud. “No, I don’t see nothing.” Then go milky soft. “ ’Cept my sweetie.”
He would lie spooned in Monroe’s arms on the lower bunk in darkness, Monroe’s bulk against his spine, Monroe’s big arm lying dead across him, Monroe’s sleepy breath on the back of his neck. “I want to kill him, Monroe.” And would hear Monroe say, “Do it, honey, and hurry back.” But how? Many conversations about that part. Monroe would say, “Walk up behind the man, what you do, and shoot him right here.” Teddy would feel Monroe’s finger poke into the groove at the base of his skull. Monroe told him where to buy a gun in Miami. Do it and throw the gun in the ocean. Told him a little .22 was all he needed.
But when Teddy saw the Colt .38 Super he couldn’t resist it. That was the start of what was becoming an expensive proposition. The gun, air fare to Puerto Rico, the hotel, the car… now back home and his mom wouldn’t give him any more money.
She actually believed he had worked for International Surveys, because he’d showed her the business cards he had printed and there was the company name and his own name with Research Representative under it. So when she asked him if he was going to get a job he told her he’d probably go back with I.S., they were a good outfit, offered a generous bonus plan and other benefits. His mom said, “That’s nice.” He told her, not right away though, he needed to readjust himself to the world, try to put the nightmare of prison out of his mind. He told her he had met other innocent men in there, like himself, unjustly accused. His mom patted his head and said, “My fine boy, treated like a criminal…” But would she break into one of her CDs or Treasury Bills and give him a few dollars, just a couple hundred say? No, her mind had more locks on it than her front door when it came to discussing money. She had given him $1,200 dollars and that was all he was getting, no more. “No. No. No,” his mom said. “Do you know what no means? It means no.” He said to her, “I met boys in there who turned to crime for less reason. Had to.” She wouldn’t budge, the old bitch.
What he’d have to do now, get next to some little old lady scooping a jackpot out of a slot tray. Offer to be of help and kid around, tell her he loved her blue hair. Take her for a nice walk on the Boardwalk. One good score might make him enough. He didn’t know how much time he had, how long the cop was going to hang around. He would like to walk in the cop’s hotel room, wake him up with a gun in his face, just like the cop had done it. Look in his eyes and say, “What do you see?” Look in his eyes first, then tell him to roll over and stick the barrel against that little groove at the base of the skull.