“Yeah, Mal said something similar. He was equally vague.” I didn’t know whether I was trying to encourage the conversation or end it. Hearing the name from Mal had been one thing; from anyone else it was different. It sparked a mixture of hard-won calm and wordless rage that I didn’t know what to do with.
Howie seemed to want to talk about it. “In the last two weeks, five of Vinaldi’s closest associates have been clipped. I don’t mean losers like the Minimart stooge,” he said, “I’m talking guys who ran most of the thirties and forties. The latest was last night.” I nodded, remembering the report I’d seen on the morning news. “He gets new people in immediately, of course, but it’s rattling him. Also, the new guys are having to learning-curve it, and someone seems to be pushing him pretty hard on all fronts. Deals going sour, DEA agents turning him, the works.”
“So it’s some other lowlife trying to take over his rackets. Vinaldi can cope with that.” I knew from experience just how capable Vinaldi was of dealing with outside interference, and I didn’t want to discuss it.
Howie shook his head. “It looks organized. Bottom line is he’s fine until confidence starts to go. Then the rats will start jumping to whatever new ship hoves in view.”
“Who the fuck could take him on?” I’d tried, with all the so-called resources of the NRPD behind me, and my life would never be the same again.
“That’s what I’d like to know. When I go to the John I have to give his guys twenty per cent of my turds, so I have a vested interest. Probably Vinaldi’d like to know too.”
“And Jack Randall makes three,” I said. “So he can buy them all a cigar.”
Howie smiled painfully. “I’m sorry, Jack.”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” I said. I finished my beer in a swallow, stood up, and left the bar.
At four o’clock I was on 54, rapping impatiently on my third door of the afternoon. There was singing coming from behind the scarred panel in front of me, so I knew someone was in. A collection of corner boys had gathered fifty yards down the corridor, so I didn’t want to be hanging around outside any longer than I had to. I’d already been to 63 and 38, and both had been a waste of time. The lower of the two apartments had already been looted, and nobody within walking distance would admit to having heard of the victim. I’d walked back to the elevator, eye-fucked all the way, and counted myself lucky just to have gotten back out again in one piece. On 63, I’d talked to the second victim’s parents, both still blank-eyed with shock. They didn’t demand to see a badge, or ask if I thought their daughter’s murderer would be caught. They didn’t know anything about their daughter’s friends, or her job, or her life. She just came and went, sometimes early, sometimes late, until one night she hadn’t come back at all.
Standard responses, no better or worse than usual. I wasn’t expecting anything different on 54, but I kept banging on the door anyway. Eventually it opened, and a stringy black woman in her early twenties stood blinking vaguely at me.
“Who are you?” I asked.
The woman’s eyes were pinned and a muscle in her cheek pulsed gently. She stopped singing slowly, and internalized my question.
“Fuck that shit,” she said. “I live here. Who the hell are you?”
My real question was answered: She was fucked up, but not so much that any answers she gave me wouldn’t be worth listening to. Always assuming I could get her to tell me anything. She didn’t look too tough, but her heart-shaped face was already beginning to hollow out, and junkies don’t trust anyone at all.
“I need to talk to you about the death of Laverne Latoya,” I said. “Can I come inside?” I glanced up the corridor. The guys on the corner were still there. They weren’t coming any closer, but they were standing and watching carefully. Either they knew the woman I was talking to, or they were on a day-trip up from the 40s, and considering robbing both me and the woman’s apartment. Something told me it was the latter, and that they were only holding off because they thought I was a cop.
The woman’s shoulders slumped. “I already told about Verne,” she said, but she took a step back and let me inside. “I’m Shelley,” she added, vaguely. “Verne was my sister.”
The living room looked like shit. The back half was piled high with stuff, and covered with dirty sheets. I knew why; six days ago Laverne had been spread over it in a mess about one inch deep. Shelley was evidently camping in a small area of the remaining floor; witness a pile of clothes, a half-empty bottle of cheap wine, and some hastily hidden works.
“Did you live here with her?”
Shelley shook her head. “Only been here two days. I found her ’cos I came to borrow some money off her but I wasn’t living here then. Came here because I lost my apartment ’cos I’m not working at the moment. I’m a dancer,” she added, trying to be helpful, before tailing off sadly, “like Verne.”
I looked at her. She was dancing now, in a small and helpless way. She was trying to stand upright, but her legs were doing their best to undermine her. Each time one sagged she compensated with the other, in a tiny weaving side-step. Maybe she had been a dancer once, perhaps even a good one—in her state I’m not sure I could have stood up at all. I briefly considered shaking her down for whatever she was holding, but she didn’t look like someone who carried much spare, instead, I offered her a cigarette.
Easy question first: “Who did you talk to?”
“Two guys. Then one guy by himself.”
“The last guy, was he different from the others?”
Shelley nodded, smoke curling up out of her mouth. “Yeah. He was okay. He seemed…” She paused for a moment as if about to say something she barely credited. “He seemed like he wanted to know who did it.”
“He did,” I said. “He was a friend of mine. What about the others?”
“They was police.” She shrugged. I knew what she meant. They came down here because they had to, they called people to vacuum the body up and take it away and then left, never bothering to leave the impression that anything very much would be done about the fact that someone had dismantled her sister.
“Were you good friends with Laverne?” I asked. A calculated question. Over the course of the previous two addresses I seemed to have started remembering how things were done.
Shelley seemed to crumple. She gave up the attempt to stand, and wove toward the one chair which wasn’t covered in crap. The sleeve of her shirt rode up as she sat, revealing a long series of marks. Possibly the reason she lost her job—but if so she had to have been dancing somewhere at least moderately smart. Most places won’t care too much about needle tracks so long as you’ll take everything off and shake yourself in the right directions.
“Yes,” she said eventually, head down.
There followed the kind of story I could probably have filled in for myself. Two girls, growing up in the 40s. Only one of them sexually abused, but the other regularly beaten to shit. Laverne the former—sometimes volunteering to prevent Shelley from getting hit. Mother escaped the 40s through death, and her daughters followed as soon as they could by climbing a couple of floors as strippers. Laverne the better dancer, better hustler; Shelley traipsing behind, pulled in her sister’s tiny, doomed wake.
Then, a month ago, Laverne hooked up with someone. Shelley didn’t know the name, only that the guy had money and that her sister had met him dancing in the 130s. She didn’t see so much of Laverne after that, and started falling deeper into the habits her sister had always somehow kept her out of; doping, and turning tricks to pay for it. As I listened, I could tell that Shelley had known, while she was doing it, that she was starting herself rolling on a slope which got very steep very quickly indeed: and that there’d been nothing she could do about it. Seven days ago a missed shift had left her with no money, and she’d come to Laverne to see about a twenty-dollar loan. She’d found the mess at the far end of the room and nearly run straight back out.