spread-legged woman wearing nothing but an open Japanese fan. Palacios put his finger on the square for Wednesday, April 24. “This is today,” he said. He moved his finger down to the next row of dates. “And this is Tuesday, April thirtieth, the last day of the month. That is when the shit will go down. Tuesday night at midnight.”
“Is that clear, Eileen?” Parker asked.
She looked at him.
Palacios caught the glance.
Very nice, he thought, and wondered if she would care to be spanked by him some day.
Parker was thinking, Well, pardon me all to hell, lady, but these are not kindergarten kids we’re playing with here, and I would not like to show up a day late and a dollar short, and lose the whole damn bust, if you don’t mind. What he was afraid of, in fact, was that they’d break down the door next week and go down the basement steps, and Burke here would see a gun or even a box cutter and pick up her skirts and run right into everybody else in her haste to get out of there.
“These people are not amateurs,” he said aloud.
“They are very definitely not amateurs,” Palacios said, smiling at her to let her know he realized her partner here was being condescending merely because she was a ravishingly beautiful redhead he would love to take to bed sometime. “The ones selling the candy, anyway. They’ve been working on this deal for a long time now,” he said. “They are not going to like you going down their basement and messing with them.”
You can hardly see where she was cut, Parker thought. On the face, he understood. Psychologically bad, especially for a woman. Still, they did wonders with cosmetic surgery these days. And yet…
“Where is this basement of theirs?” Eileen asked.
“That’s one of the problems,” Palacios said.
“I didn’t know there were any problems,” Eileen said, and looked at Parker again.
“The problem is it keeps changing,” Palacios said.
“What keeps changing?”
“The basement where the dope is.”
“They keep moving the dope, is that what you mean?”
“So far, yes, it’s been in three different locations.”
“Why is that, do you suppose?”
“They’re being cautious,” Parker said.
“Careful,” Palacios agreed, nodding.
“They’re not amateurs,” Parker reminded her again.
“Or,”Eileen said.
Both men looked at her.
“They’re onto us,” she said.
HOGAN GOT BACKto Ollie at ten that night.
Ollie was enjoying a snack before going to bed. He hated any of his meals being interrupted, and was almost sorry he’d given Hogan his home number.
“What I did,” Hogan explained, “was first I cleaned the site, filed it down smooth, and polished it with Carborundum till I had it looking like a mirror. Then I kept swabbing it with hydrochloric acid till the numbers came up. Took me three hours altogether.”
Don’t tell me your fuckin troubles while I’m eating, Ollie thought.
“So what’d the computer have to say?” he asked.
“The gun was registered to a guy named Charles McGrath. He used it in a bank holdup five years ago, shot the guard and a lady making a deposit. He still had the piece in his possession when he got busted two months later.”
“Where is he now?”
“Castleview. Doing a max of twenty on a B-felony conviction. He should be coming up for parole in a year or so.”
“Meanwhile he’s behind bars, is that what you’re saying?”
“That’s what the computer says.”
“What happened to the gun?”
“What do you mean?”
“After they sent Mr. McGrath to the country.”
“I told you. It was recovered in his possession.”
“Yeah, but how’d it get on the street again?”
“Well now, gee, that’syourjob, ain’t it?” Hogan said, and hung up.
SHARYN EVERARD COOKEwas the Police Department’s Deputy Chief Surgeon, the first black woman ever to be appointed to the job—though “black” was a misnomer in that her skin was the color of burnt almond. She wore her black hair in a modified Afro, which—together with high cheekbones, a generous mouth, and eyes the color of loam—gave her the look of a proud Masai woman. Five feet, nine inches tall, she considered herself a trifle overweight at a hundred and thirty pounds. Bert Kling thought she looked just right. Bert Kling thought she was the most beautiful woman he’d ever met. Bert Kling loved her to death.
The only problem was where to sleep.
Sharyn’s apartment was at the very end of the Calm’s Point subway line, some forty minutes from Kling’s studio apartment across the river and into the trees. From his apartment, it took him twenty minutes to get to work in the morning. From her apartment, it took him an hour and fifteen minutes. Sharyn still had her own private practice, but as a uniformed one-star chief, she still worked fifteen to eighteen hours a week at the Chief Surgeon’s Office, which was located in Rankin Plaza in that part of the city known as Majesta. Majesta happened to be forty-five minutes by subway from Kling’s apartment. So it all got down to where they should sleep on any given night. All couples should have such a problem.
They had planned to spend that Wednesday night in Sharyn’s apartment, but because a cop had got shot downtown, and Sharyn was here in The City, anyway—
No matter where you lived in this city, Isola was still called The City. If you lived in Riverhead or Majesta or Calm’s Point or even Bethtown, and you were taking the subway or a bus downtown, you were going into The City. That was it. Sharyn lived in Calm’s Point, but Kling lived in The City, and since she wasinthe city anyway that day, they decided to sleep at his place, talk about lengthy exposition.
His place was a studio apartment.
His place wasn’t too very comfortable.
But she loved him, so what could you do?
“Did your mother really work for Gabe Foster?” he asked.
She was in the bathroom brushing her teeth. She was still wearing a half slip and a bra and the sandals she’d worn to work that morning, strappy and buckled, with a medium-sized heel. She had rinsed out her pantyhose, and they were hanging over the shower rod. He liked her things hanging all over the place. He liked anything that reminded him of her.
“My mother worked for everyone in the world,” she said. “How do you think I got through college and med school?”
“Foster said she used to help around the church every now and then. When he was just starting out.”
“That’s possible,” Sharyn said. “I’ll have to ask her.”
She was cold-creaming makeup off her face now. It took her a half-hour every night to get ready for bed. She always came to bed smelling sweet and clean and fresh and beautiful. He loved the way she smelled. He loved everything about her.
“You ever meet him?” Kling asked.
“Foster? Once. There was a liquor store holdup in Diamondback, and one of the cops who responded was a brother. He got shot twice in the chest. Foster showed up at the hospital to do his thing.”
“What’s his thing?”
“False compassion for anyone who’s black, indignation for any imagined slight to the black man—or woman, he claims, though I understand he favors honkie trim. He’s a rabble rouser who wants to be mayor of this city one day. How’d you happen to talk to him?”
