I dialed a number, and when a tone sounded I punched in the number of the phone I was calling from. Then I hung up and held the mute receiver to my ear while surreptitiously holding down the hook with my other hand, so that it would appear to passersby that I was actually using the phone, not simply waiting for it to ring.
I didn’t have long to wait. I picked up and a voice said, “Who wants TJ?”
“The police of three continents,” I said. “Among others.”
“Hey, my man! Where’s it at, Matt? You got something for TJ?”
“I might,” I said. “Are you free this afternoon?”
“No, but I be reasonable. What you got?”
“I’m a block from DeWitt Clinton Park,” I said. “I don’t know if you know it.”
“ ’Course I know it. That’s the park and not the school? Say I meet you by the statue of the captain.”
“You mean the soldier.”
“I know he’s a soldier. I don’t know his name, so I call him Captain Flanders.”
“I think you’ve got the rank wrong,” I said. “He’s dressed like an enlisted man.”
“Oh yeah? He white, so I figure he be an officer. Meet you there in twenty minutes?”
“I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”
“Then why’d you call, Paul? What you said—”
“I don’t think we should meet in the park, that’s all.” I looked around for a place to meet but didn’t see anything suitable on the avenue. “Tenth Avenue and Fifty-seventh,” I said. “There’s a coffee shop on the corner. Armstrong’s is on one corner and there’s a high-rise apartment building diagonally across from it, and on one of the other corners there’s a coffee shop, a Greek place.”
“That’s three corners,” he said. “What’s on the fourth one?”
“I don’t know offhand. What difference does it make?”
“Don’t make none to me, man, but you already told me about two other places that don’t make no difference either. You want to meet me at a coffee shop, all you got to tell me about is the coffee shop. I guess I find it all right. No need to give me landmarks.”
“Twenty minutes?”
“Twenty minutes.”
I took my time getting there, doing a little window shopping along Fifty-seventh Street. It took me fifteen minutes to get to the coffee shop, and TJ was already there, sitting in one of the front booths and working his way through a pair of cheeseburgers and a plate of well-done french fries. TJ is a black street kid, visually indistinguishable from all the others who hang out on West Forty-second Street between Bryant Park and the Port Authority Bus Terminal. A while back a case had led me to that blighted stretch of pavement, and that’s where I met TJ.
By now we were old friends and business associates, but I still knew remarkably little about him. TJ was the only name I knew for him, and I had no idea what the letters stood for, or if indeed they stood for anything at all. I didn’t know how old he was — sixteen, if I had to guess — or anything about his family. From his accent and speech pattern I’d have to guess he was Harlem born and bred, but he turned accents on and off, and I had heard him sound convincingly Brooks Brothers more than once.
He spent most of his waking hours in and around Times Square, practicing the survival skills you need to get over on the Deuce. I don’t know where he slept. He insisted he wasn’t homeless, that he had a place to live, but he was very secretive about the subject.
At first I’d had no way to reach him, and when he called me I was unable to return his calls. Then he took the money I paid him for a good night’s work and bought himself a beeper, claiming it was an investment. He was very proud of the beeper and always managed to pay the monthly charge to keep it on-line. He thought I should have one, too, and couldn’t understand why I didn’t.
Whatever else he did for money, he seemed willing to drop it in a second if I called him with an offer of a day’s work. When I failed to call he would call me, insisting I must have something for him, proclaiming that he was energetic and resourceful. God knows I didn’t throw a whole lot of money his way, and I’m sure he got a better financial return on his time scamming on the Deuce, running errands for the players and shilling for the monte men. But he persisted in regarding the detective business as his chosen career, and looked forward to the day when the two of us would be partners. Meanwhile he seemed perfectly content to play Tonto.
While he ate I told him about Glenn Holtzmann and George Sadecki. He’d heard about the incident — it would have been hard for anyone in the tri-state area to miss it — but it had had less impact on the Deuce than in less volatile neighborhoods. I could understand this. A dude shot a dude is how the street kids would sum it up, and what after all was so remarkable about that? It happened all the time.
Now, though, he had a reason to pay attention to the fate of these particular dudes, and he listened closely while I laid it out for him. When I was done I motioned for the waiter and ordered more coffee for myself and a chocolate egg cream for TJ.
When his egg cream came he took a sip and nodded like a gourmet indicating that the Pommard was acceptable. Not outstanding, mind you, but perfectly acceptable. He said, “They’s people in the park an’ on the street. Be buyin’ this an’ sellin’ that.”
“Not so much in the daytime,” I said, “but especially at night.”
“An’ it was nighttime when it went down, an’ you think maybe somebody seen something. An’ they take one look at you an’ right away they make you for the Man, so you don’t be gettin’ no place with ’em.”
“I didn’t even try.”
“Nobody be thinkin’ I the Man.”
“My thought exactly.”
“They see me an’ you together, they be puttin’ two an’ two. So that’s why we here ‘stead of meetin’ in the park.”
“Good thinking.”
“Well, it don’t take no rocket scientist.” He lowered his head, worked on the egg cream. He came up for air and said, “I’d fit in better’n you would. No question. Might even bump into some dude I already know. Might not, though. Clinton Park be off of my usual turf.”
“Just by a few blocks, and you must have made the trip before. You remembered Captain Flanders.”
“Oh, Cappy an’ I be old friends, but this here’s my city, Kitty. I be plannin’ to know it all, time I’m through. That don’t mean I know the dudes on the pavement everywhere I go. Most of your players, they don’t move around too much. Somebody new comes on the scene, he be looked over pretty good. Maybe he competition, maybe he runnin’ a game of his own. Maybe he the Man, or maybe he workin’ for the Man. More he ask questions, more he start lookin’ like trouble.”
“If there’s a risk involved,” I said, “let’s forget it.”
“Be a risk in crossin’ the street,” he said. “Risk in not crossin’ the street, too. Can’t spend your life standin’ on the corner. What you do, you look both ways an’ then you cross.”
“Meaning?”
“Just that it might could take a few days. Can’t be walkin’ up to people an’ askin’ questions right off. Got to take your time, build up to it.”
“Take all the time you want,” I said. “The only thing is that there’s not much money in the case. Tom Sadecki didn’t give me a great deal of it in advance, and I doubt there’ll be more coming. As a matter of fact, I have a feeling I’ll wind up giving all or part of his money back to him.”