Some people in the department knew for a fact that Rosalie had grown up in East Riverhead at the same time Michael Fallon was coming along, and that as teenagers they'd been madly in love with each other. It was also true that Rosalie later moved to San Antonio, Texas, after Fallon ditched her to marry a girl named Peggy Shea. The rest, however, was all surmise.
Was it true, for example, that poor, brokenhearted Rosalie had learned how to run a cathouse out there in the Wild West? Was it true that the reason she'd never been busted in this city was that she'd become Fallon's mistress the moment she came back here to make her fortune and buy a lot of hats? Was it true that she was still Fallon's mistress? In which case, this might have explained why she'd never been busted, since Michael Fallon happened to be Chief of Detectives.
All this was whispered around the water coolers down at Headquarters.
The two girls were named Cassie and Lane.
These were not their real names. They were both from West Germany, and their real names were Klara Schildkraut and Lottchen Schmidt, but here in the land of opportunity they were Cassie Cole and Lane Thomas. They were both in their early twenties, both blond, both wearing ankle-strapped spike-heeled slippers and teddies - Cassie's was red and Lane's was black - and both stoned out of their minds on cocaine and champagne. So were Hamilton and Isaac.
This was a nice little sundown party here in the penthouse Hamilton owned on Grover Park North. This was also a little business meeting here on the twenty-first floor, but there was nothing Hamilton liked better than mixing business with pleasure. The two girls had been trained by Rosalie Purchase to dispense pleasure by the cartload. Isaac was dispensing a little pleasure himself, by way of refilling the girls' glasses and heaping fresh mounds of very good coke onto their mirrors. The girls sniffed with their legs widespread, the better to see you, my dear. In the west, the sun was almost completely gone, its dying stain visible only peripherally through the apartment's south-facing windows.
The two girls spoke with heavy German accents.
'This is very good shit here,' Cassie said.
It sounded like, 'Das ist vehr gut schidt hier.'
'We have connections,' Hamilton said, and winked at Isaac.
Both of them were all silked out for the girls. Hamilton was wearing green silk pajamas and a yellow silk robe and black velvet slippers with what looked like the crest of the king of the Belgians on the instep. He looked like Eddie Murphy playing Hugh Hefner. Isaac was wearing a red silk, V-necked, short-sleeved top over what looked like red silk Bermuda shorts. He was barefooted. He was wearing eyeglasses. He looked like a trained monkey with an enormous hard-on.
'Come do me here, sweetheart,' he said to Lane.
Lane was busy snorting a mountain of coke. With her free hand, she reached down to unsnap the crotch of her black teddy. Snorting, she began stroking herself. Isaac watched her working her own lips.
'But why do you feel the cop takes precedence?' he asked.
'For what Herrera may have told him,' Hamilton said.
'But what does the little spic know?
'Naughty, naughty,' Cassie said, at last raising her head from the mirror. Rosalie had taught her that calling Hispanics spics was a no-no in this business where so many of her customers were Colombian dealers up from Miami.
'You finished with that shit?' Hamilton asked,
'For now,' Cassie said, grinning.
Oh my, she was stoned. Oh my, these two niggers had glorious shit here.
'Then come do me,' Hamilton said.
'Oh, yeah,' she said.
It sounded like, 'Ach, ja.'
She went to him, and settled down on the carpet between his knees, making herself comfortable. The strap of the teddy fell off her right shoulder. She was about to put it back when Hamilton said, 'Leave it.'
'Okay,' she said, and lowered the strap completely, pulling the front of the teddy down over her right breast. Hamilton cupped her breast in his hand. He began kneading it, almost absentmindedly. The nipple actually stiffened, she was that stoned.
'He likes tits,' she said to Lane.
Lane was on Isaac's lap now, facing him, straddling him. Both her breasts were in his hands.
'He does, too,' she said.
They were talking German now, which Rosalie had warned them against ever doing in the presence of customers. Customers didn't like to think they were being discussed in a foreign language. But in this case it was okay because now Hamilton and Isaac fell into a Jamaican Creole patois neither of the girls could understand. So Cassie and Lane chitchatted back and forth in German like hausfraus gossiping over the back fence except that one had Hamilton in her mouth and the other was riding Isaac hell-bent for leather. Hamilton looked down at Cassie's bobbing blonde head and sipped at his champagne and sang out the riffs of the patois to Isaac who sipped his champagne and then told Lane in perfectly understandable English to turn around the other way, which she did at once, commenting to Cassie in German that if he tried any backdoor stuff all bets were off, this was getting to be a dirty party.
Dirty in more ways than one.
Isaac and Hamilton were discussing murder.
Hamilton was saying that if José Herrera, in gratitude or for whatever reason imaginable, had told the blond cop anything at all about their operation, why then they were both dangerous, the cop more so than Herrera. In which case, the cop had to be dusted very quickly. To silence him if he hadn't yet discussed the posse with anyone else in the department. Or, if he had already shared the information, to dust him as a warning to the others.
'We have to make a statement, man,' Hamilton said in the patois.
Let the police know that where millions of dollars were at stake, no one could be allowed to interfere.
'Especially not with all the money we're paying them,' Isaac said in the patois.
'Was his name in the newspaper?' Hamilton asked.
'I'll find it.'
Lane was standing in front of him, her legs widespread, bent over, hands on her thighs, looking straight at Hamilton while Isaac pumped her from behind. There was a blank expression on her face. Hamilton suddenly desired her fiercely.
'Come here,' he said.
'Me?'
'No, Adolf Hitler,' he said, making a joke.
Lane was twenty-two years old. She had only vaguely heard of Adolf Hitler. But she knew who the boss was here. She eased Isaac out of her, giving him a promising backward glance, head turned over her shoulder. Smiling, then, she licked her lips the way Rosalie had taught her and walked the way Rosalie had taught her to where Hamilton was on the couch with Cassie.
Isaac knew better than to complain.
He poured himself another glass of champagne and watched as the two girls began working Hamilton.
In the patois, Hamilton said, 'I'll take the cop out myself.'