On the other hand, every cloud has a silver lining. Stack had money and dope for him. Junkies may have lots of problems, but junk cures them all. This thought struck Walker with the force of revelation. He leaped to his feet, splashed water on his face, dressed, and stumbled down three flights of stairs to the peeling cave that served the Olympia Hotel as a lobby. There was a pay phone against one wall. Walker fumbled a quarter in the slot. A dial tone! Maybe his luck was changing. He dialed the number written on the scrap of paper Stack had given him last night.
A woman’s voice answered. “Is Stack there?” he asked.
“Stack? There ain’t no …” Her voice cut off, and after a few seconds of silence, Walker heard Stack’s whispery voice.
“This is Stack. Who’s there?”
“It’s me, Stack, Donald. Stack, when you gonna get here? I need some help, man.”
“Yeah, well Donald, help is on the way.”
“No, I’m really sick, man. You gotta help me, like you said. I gotta get out of this shit hole …”
“Don’t you go nowhere, boy! You go back to your room, have a little drink. I’ll get something ’round to you before you know it. Just stay put, hear? Now, Donald, what room you in?”
“Uh, Ten. You gonna be here soon? Stack, they got roaches here, I can’t stand it much more, you got to come soon…. I need some help, Stack …”
The voice in Louis’s ear degenerated into an inarticulate whine. He broke the connection and dialed a number.
“Elvis? Listen here. It’s going down, now. Get over to my place, we gonna make a delivery. OK, man, see you soon.”
This business accomplished, Man Louis hung up the phone and resumed what he had been doing before Walker called. He lay back on his king-sized waterbed, naked. “Girl, get busy,” he said. The woman on the bed, also naked, obediently lowered her mouth to his groin. Louis’s sexual activities were ordinarily restricted to the periods immediately following his robberies. At such times he would call up this particular woman, DeVonne Carter, who would come to his apartment on Amsterdam Avenue, remove her clothes and put herself at his disposal for from three days to a week. She was a big woman, with the hard rounded body of a nineteenth-century fountain statue, and she felt she had found a good deal. Louis paid her rent and gave her spending money, in return for which she had to come when called, leave when bidden, keep her body clean and free of venereal disease, and her mouth shut. Louis’s tastes were odd, but bearable; at least they didn’t draw blood. Remaining silent was something of a burden, since she was a naturally friendly and gregarious person, but this too could be borne. She was used to men making the rules.
DeVonne had scarcely finished her latest service when the door buzzer sounded. Louis rolled away from her, got off the bed, put on a terry cloth bathrobe, and strode through the living room to his front door. He peered through the fish-eye lens set in the door and observed Elvis’s distorted image. He opened the door, admitted his accomplice, and then relocked it elaborately, two dead bolts and a police lock.
Elvis glanced around the living room with pleasure. It had deep white shag rugs, pale leather couches facing across a wood and glass coffee table. Big color TV, big stereo. The most fascinating thing about the room, however, was the bookcase, which covered the entire wall facing the windows. Elvis had never seen so many books in a private residence; there were hundreds of them, neatly racked and arranged by subject and author. The first time he had visited the apartment he blurted out, “Shee-it, man! You read all them books?”
To which Louis had replied with a superior smile, “Yeah, I read them. Some of ’em twice.”
Louis was at the bookcase now, taking down a hardbound copy of The Shame of Our Prisons. He carried it over to the coffee table and sat down on one of the couches, motioning Elvis to take a seat opposite him. Louis opened the book, to reveal a cut-out section in its center. In the cutout was a plastic bag, a package of glassine envelopes of the type used by stamp dealers, and a pair of surgical gloves. Louis pulled on the gloves and unrolled the plastic bag. He tapped a tea-spoonful of white powder into one of the glassine envelopes.
“What’s all this, Man?”
“It’s headache powder, what you think?” Louis held the envelope up to the light and tapped it so that the powder fell into a corner and then folded it into quarters. “This is gonna get rid of our little headache. Come on, I’ll get the rest of the stuff.”
Louis went into the bedroom. He left the door open for a moment and Elvis caught a glimpse of a chocolate-brown woman sitting naked on the bed. She caught him staring and flashed a broad and antic grin over Louis’s shoulder as he reemerged. He was carrying the attaché case. Opening it on the coffee table, with the rubber gloves still on, he removed the bank cash bag he had taken from the liquor store. He took out all the cash except a dozen miscellaneous small bills and put in the packet of white powder. He placed the bank bag inside a paper bag and handed it to Elvis.
He said, “Take this down to that hotel where that Snowball’s stayin’ and give it to him. Olympia Hotel, Room Ten. He won’t ask no questions when he see that bag o’ shit. Make sure he shoot up, then get out of there and go back to your own place. And don’t touch nothin’, especially not the damn cash bag. Let him take it, and then take the paper bag with you.”
“What, you put some rat poison in the shit?”
Louis grinned. “No baby, there’s nothing in that bag but shit. Pure shit, that’s all it is. No quinine, no milk sugar, no nothin’. He shoot up what he usually do, figures maybe it be bumped six, seven, ten times-but this ain’t been bumped at all. Cost me a fuckin’ load but it’s worth it, you dig? That boy go out like a light. The cops find him, coupla days, maybe a week, all swole up with the needle still in his arm, what they gonna think? Hey, what the goddam medical examiner gonna think? Heroin overdose, open and shut.”
Elvis was slow, but he could follow this. “And he got the bag from the store on him, so they gonna think …”
Louis’s grin widened. “You got it, Pres. You caught on, good for you. Now look, here’s the most important thing. He got a little piece of paper with my phone number on it. Get that from him before you give him the bag. Before, dig? Don’t worry, he give you the key to his momma to get his hands on what you holdin’. OK, take off. I don’t want him jumpin’ out no windows or goin’ nowhere.” He reached into the attaché case again and brought out a roll of cash. “Oh yeah, here’s your share of the job.” He counted off five hundred dollars.
Elvis had never had five hundred dollars in his life. It took all the cool he could muster not to giggle like a schoolboy. He pocketed the loot without a word, gave Louis what he imagined was a gangsterish sort of nod, took the bag, and left the apartment. As he left, he thought of what he had seen in Louis’s bedroom. Fine set of jugs on that girl, he thought. Got to get me one, get some kinda fine setup to put her in. That Louis, now he some kinda dude, he thought. So he strolled toward the subway, money in his jeans, the future bright before him, on his way to commit his very first murder, innocent as a clam.
It took Elvis nearly two hours to get to Tenth Avenue and 23rd Street. He ran into some guys he knew from the street on the way to 137th Street IRT station, and had to jive with them awhile. Then they walked up the avenue a little way, scoping out the girls, and then went into a hat store and tried on some hats. Elvis finally bought a Borsalino for sixty dollars, got to flash his roll, show some class. Sincere, but not efficient, was Elvis.