He looked down at her and his rancor evaporated.
“Don’t miss a trick, do you?”
“I’ve been playing games with columnists since I was sixteen, honey. They’ll be expecting the customary sardonic Hamilton, instead you’ll show a bit of humility. They’re expecting the churlish Hamilton, be whimsical. They’re expecting you to be haughty, be grateful for the honor. Be brief and sit down. Knock ‘em all on their pompous asses.”
She stood on her toes and swept her tongue across his lower lip.
“After that, what the hell,” she said with a shrug, “at the poker game, if it suits you, you can be the sweet, supercilious son of a bitch I’ve grown to adore.”
16
No dog is born bad.
Wow was remembering that line as he and Ryan stood on the corner of West 10th and Bleecker Streets. Five-seven, built like a tank, dark-skinned and balding, Wow DeMarco was dressed in freshly pressed jeans, a white sweat shirt and a black leather jacket, his cautious black eyes surveying the block in front of them. Butch Ryan, six-one and muscular, with thick, neatly trimmed black hair cut below his ears, his gray eyes aloof and detached, was wearing his customary dark blue suit with a light tan, crew neck sweater. Wow’s arms hung loosely at his side, fingers drumming his thighs. Butch’s hands were tucked in his pants pocket, his attitude bordering on the debonair.
An unlikely pair at best.
They had a seminal connection: A passionate public defender named Mark Windham who had saved both of them from doing hard time by convincing a calcified juvenile judge that the two teen gang bangers, one an Hispanic Crip from Spanish Harlem, the other an Irish Westie from Hell’s Kitchen, were proof that “no dog is born bad,” that their youthful hauteur had been tamed; in Butch’s case, by a dedicated older brother who was a decorated firefighter; in Wow’s case, by an Hispanic ex-con known as Big Luis who ran a store front hiring agency which was really a front for a harsh, kick-ass, tough love regimen designed by Luis who, with a kind of ethnic animal instinct, picked gang kids he thought worth saving. In the back room, there was a warning scrawled on the wall reminding them succinctly: “Work or die.”
Cody frequently paired them because they both knew the streets, kept up with its volatile argot, and played a dazzling good guy, bad guy act. Wow was the bad guy with the cunning eyes and mercurial temper; Butch the good guy whose insouciant eyes and muscular frame served to comfort a capricious suspect or witness. Little did their quarry realize that Butch could turn from hare to tiger in a flashbulb-instant and Wow, deceptively alarmed by his partner’s seemingly choleric behavior, could become the rabbit. The quick change act was enough to make a snake sweat.
But standing here on a corner in the West Village, where Jonee Ansa, who was Running Recon, had dropped them off, Wow was getting antsy staring at the enclave of restaurants, coffee shops, jazz clubs, tattoo parlors, t-shirt joints and apartments occupied by an intermixture of every possible profession from dock workers and bus drivers to actors, writers, and college professors.
And we ain’t got a clue, DeMarco thought. Not a suspect. Not a witness. Nada.
“Jeez Christ, man, we spend two hours talking with every sex cop in town and what do we know? Zilch, zero.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Butch answered lazily, “we picked up a lot from the guys. We know these sex clubs are mostly private. We know the cops don’t screw with them unless they get too public and upset the citizenry. We know they’re pretty small. Fifteen, twenty, maybe thirty people, very well-heeled and hetero.”
“That really narrows it down.”
“C’mon, we know more than that.”
They knew that the people who frequented the sex clubs to which Handley most likely was attracted had a lot of money. Men set the rules, as one informant told them. Solo women were not allowed although, curiously, a man with two attractive females was. Many of the participants were married couples or couples who lived together or men with their mistresses or, perhaps in Handley’s case, men who brought attractive women with them. There were some daytime clubs for guys who liked matinees but most were nightclubs. They could pop up behind a club or restaurant. Or in a basement. Or in somebody’s apartment or condo. Just about anywhere where comfort and discretion would permit. The rules seemed to vary somewhat with one exception: gay men were out. That was a different clique. They had their own turf.
Because of the time element, DeMarco and Ryan had pretty much narrowed down the location to a square block bordered on the south and north by 10th and Charles and on the west and east by Hudson and Bleecker.
They headed down 10th toward Hudson. Ryan stopped about halfway down the block. He looked around, turned up his jacket collar, studying the street. DeMarco walked a little farther down toward Hudson, checking the landscape. Ryan cupped his hands over his mouth, breathed on them, and then rubbed them together.
“It got cold all of a sudden.”
“Hell, it’s almost November. You should know better.”
“You sound like my Aunt Mabel.” He leaned forward, squinting up and down 10th Street. He was visualizing the big board back at the Loft and the satellite shot of the area. They were on the north side of 10th. The limo had dropped Handley off near the corner of 10th and Hudson, which was to his right. And Handley had caught a cab on Bleecker, which was a half block to his left and around the corner to the south.
“I dunno, kid. You know what Cody always says, if you can’t think it, talk it out.”
“Uh huh. Then he goes off and has a chat with a friggin’ squirrel.”
“Whatever works for him. There isn’t an alley on the other side of the street.”
“I noticed that.”
“So he gets dropped off near the corner a half a block down there on Hudson and gets picked up a half a block that way on Bleecker. And he’s all dolled up and stands out like a kid with a black eye at First Communion.”
“And he’s gonna get where he’s going without dancing in the street like Gene Kelly.”
“My thought exactly.”
“Straight and narrow.”
“We gotta start somewhere, Wow. I say we make some maybes into positives to start with. Like he comes down here to meet a dame. A classy dame. Not a pimp. He isn’t into hookers, that’s why he goes to these clubs.”
“Somebody he’s met before, man. Maybe to set up that gig in his apartment.”
“Yeah. This somebody, this chick, is gonna meet him and he’s coming in from Cincy so the setup has to cover for a late arrival. A classy dame isn’t gonna sit around some club or restaurant alone.”
“But one of these sex clubs, that works, right? She’ll be comfortable if he’s a little late. And she checks on the flight, see if it’s late.”
“Good thinking. Know what, Wow? I don’t think it’s in an apartment. Too many people going in and out. A doorman, too, probably. That’s too risky for Handley.”
“That’s good, Butch, that’s real good. So she goes to this club, wherever the hell it is, about the time he’ll get there.”
“Right. And he isn’t going anyplace and hang out waiting for her. I mean, this guy’s all class. He’s gonna be noticed at that time of night with his three thousand dollar coat and killer briefcase. So he’s gonna go straight to the club, too.”
“And it’s more likely to be in an alley than on a main street.”
17
“Jesus!” Stinelli said. “What the hell kind of wacko are you dealing with?”
Hue and Cody had just run the entire Handley briefing for him, but the commander’s eyes were fixed on the photograph of the death scene. Stinelli and Cody stood at the back of the operations room as he stared at the main board. Simon and Hue were at their posts, Kate Winters was sitting at her desk and Charley was asleep on the cot in Cody’s office. The rest of the crew was in the field.