I balanced the glass on the arm of the couch, picked the telephone up off the rug, and placed it in my lap. My cat jumped up on the couch and touched her nose to my arm, then jumped down and walked off, tail up, to the bedroom. I dialed Winnie Luzon.
Winnie picked up on the third ring. “Talk about it,” he said.
“Winnie.”
“Yeah?”
“Nick Stefanos.”
“Nicky! Happy New Year, Holmes.”
“And to you, man.” There was some sort of tinny disco in the background, and the laughter of a woman.
“So what’s up, Nick?”
“Partying tonight?”
“You know me, man, tonight the shit is ser ious.”
“I won’t keep you, then. Got a couple of questions, though, if you can spare a minute.”
“Hold on.” Winnie put his hand over the mouthpiece and yelled something I couldn’t make out. When he got back on the line the music had been cut, and the woman was talking rapidly in Spanish, her voice fading as she walked away. I heard a match strike and the crackle of lit paper, and Winnie’s exhale.
“We talk now?”
Winnie said, “Sure.”
“Listen-you ever hear of a place called the Olde World? Pizza and subs, down in your neighborhood, Sixteenth and U?”
“Down near Rio Loco’s, right?”
“The same.”
“Yeah, sure. Good pizza, man.”
“You know the owners, anything about ’em?”
Winnie took in some smoke and held it. I could envision the glaze in his eyes, and the shrug. “Uh-uh.”
“There was a place near the Olde World, another pizza joint, called the Pie Shack.”
“The Pie Shack-that’s that place burned.”
“Arson?” I said.
“That was the rumor.”
“Any real word on that?”
“Nothing in stone.”
“How about the name Bonanno, that mean anything?”
“Bonanno?” Winnie said. “It’s a Guinea name, Nick, c naem›, ommon as Smith.”
“So it doesn’t click.”
“Uh-uh. This about that Goodrich thing, the thing with Joey DiGeordano?”
“That’s taken care of,” I said.
Winnie went silent for a minute or so, then snapped his fingers into the receiver. “Hey, Nicky, that reminds me, man. You had some heat come around, asking questions about you, in Malcolm X.”
“What kind of heat?”
“Two cops. Detectives I do business with, now and again.”
“You sell them information?”
“When I have to, yeah. But this one, I don’t like the way he looks, or the way he talks. I don’t sell him nothin’.”
“What was he asking?”
“About your friend, the one got slashed in the Piedmont.”
“William Henry.”
“Right. This joker wanted to know if you been around, askin’ about your friend.”
“You tell him anything?”
Winnie paused. “Don’t embarrass yourself, Nick.”
“Thanks, Winnie.” I had a sip of bourbon and let it settle while I thought things over. “What’d this cop look like?”
“Skinny and mean. Like a wet dog.”
“He give his name?”
“Goloria.”
I put fire to a Camel and rolled the bourbon around in the glass. “And his partner?”
“Lady cop, with nuts.”
“Wallace, right?”
“That’s right. Ring a bell, Nick?”
“It’s beginning to,” I said.
Listen, man, I gotta go.” Winnie’s voice lowered to a whisper. “Don’t want to piss off the pussy, Holmes. Know what I’m sayin’?”
“Go on, Winnie. Have a good time, man.”
“Stay safe, Nick.” The phone clicked dead.
My landlord was having a small party upstairs. I listened to the thump of bass and the sound of feet moving on hardwood floors. My cat emerged from the darkness of the bedroom and hopped back up onto the couch. She waited for me to move the telephone aside, then crawled onto my lap and kneaded it until she tucked her paws in and dropped down on her belly.
I lit another smoke and finishoke it ued my bourbon. A blanket of gray had settled in the center of the room. I butted the cigarette and turned off the lamp next to the couch, letting my head ease back as I ran my fingers through the fur of my sleeping cat. The last thing I heard was an ebb of laughter from above, the swell of music, and the muffled screams of old friends and lovers.
TWENTY-SEVEN
"Hello?”
“Mr. DiGeordano?”
“Yes.”
“Nick Stefanos.”
“Nick, how are you? Happy New Year.”
“Thanks, same to you.”
“What can I do for you?”
“I apologize for calling you at home on the holiday, but I need to ask a favor.”
“You want to speak to Joey?”
“No, sir, it’s you I’d like to speak to.”
Louis DiGeordano cleared his throat. “Go ahead,” he said in his high rasp.
“Not over the phone, if you don’t mind.”
“Is this about the Goodrich girl?”
“Some of it is,” I said. “Most of it’s about something else.”
DiGeordano’s voice went in and out as he mumbled for a bit. I sat on the couch at my apartment, sipping coffee. He put his mouth closer to the line. “The family’s coming over for New Year’s dinner,” he said, “at five. I suppose I can meet you this morning, for a short while.”
“How about in about an hour? Say, eleven o’clock?”
“Fine.”
“Hains Point, is that okay? Parking Area Six. You know where that is?”
“Do I know it? Nick, it was me that took you to Hains Point for your first time, nearly thirty years ago.”
“Can I pick you up?”
“No, I’ll have Bobby drive me. See you at eleven.”
I waited for another dial tone, then rang Darnell. He lived alone in the Shaw area of Northwest, with only a mattress on the floor and a small table and chair set in a bare-walled efficiency. The holidays were rough on guys like me, rougher on guys like Darnell.
Darnell said, “Yeah.”
“Darnell, it’s Nick.”
“Headin’ down to Hains Point. Want to come along?”
“Hains Point? While the hawk flies? Shit.”
“I’ve got to meet a man. It won’t take long. But it’s a nice day, thought you might want to take a drive. Matter of fact, thought you might want to drive.”
“You know I ain’t driven a car since I checked outta Lorton. Don’t even have a license, Nick.”
“Come on, Darnell-what’re you going to do today, sit around, watch beer commercials in black and white? You don’t even drink.”
Darnell thought it over. “I can drive?”
“Yeah.”
“You swing by my way?”
“In a half hour.”
Darnell said, “Right.”
We caught the park off Thirteenth at Arkansas and took the express route downtown. Heavily clothed joggers bounded coltishly through blocks of sunlight on the path to our right, the wind at their backs.
Darnell wore his brown overcoat, his matching brown leather kufi tight on his head. He drove my Dart with one hand on the wheel, his left elbow resting on the window’s edge. Darnell had brought his own tape-Sly Stone’s There’s a Riot Goin’ On- for the ride, and he slipped it in as soon as he had slid gleefully into the driver’s seat. He had rolled down the window right after that, and I had let him do it without objection, seeing the involuntary, childlike grin on his face, though it wasn’t a day for open windows. The bright sun barely dented the cold front that had fallen into town overnight.
We passed the Kennedy Center and drove along the river to East Potomac Park, winding finally into Ohio Drive. Darnell eased off the gas as the road went one-way, a line of naked-branched cherry trees to our left, the golf course to our right. After another quarter-mile, at Parking Area Six, Darnell pulled the Dart into a small lot that faced Washington Channel.
There were few cars circling the park, and only one-a red Mercedes coupe with gold alloy wheels-in the lot. In the light I could make out the outline of a shaven head behind the tinted glass of the coupe’s driver’s side. I rolled my own window down and pushed the lighter into the dash. When the lighter popped out thirty seconds later, I used it to burn a Camel.