falsetto almost-fag voice began, “We got cut off I want-”
Lenington hung up on him again. When the phone rang a third time, again immediately, he snatched it off the hook. Some fucking guys never learned.
“Listen, asshole, I-”
“No, asshole, you listen,” said the voice, sounding suddenly not faggy at all. “Five large just to listen.”
This time the man calling himself Burkie hung up.
And then didn’t call again. Goddam him! Had he played the guy wrong? Jack already had started to think of those five dimes as his five dimes he didn’t have to do anything for except just listen. But how could he listen if the fuckhead didn’t call?
Couple of evenings later, Jack was gunning a few in Liverpool Lil’s, a neighborhood pub cattycorner across Lyon from the Presidio gates. It was a dark narrow place with red brick floors and wooden walls covered with photographs, and shiny wineglasses hanging upside down over the bar, and a good steak-and-kidney pie on the menu.
But he was here after making his monthly dual collections-gash and cash, Jack liked to call them-from a discreet high-price call girl who lived just up the street on the Presidio Wall. They’d have a drink, Jack would warn her if anything bad might be coming down, she’d take him home to lay him and pay him.
“Hey, Jack,” said the bartender, “telephone for you.”
Even though off duty, Jack had conscientiously left the number with Dispatch. Never knew when one of his other little arrangements might need servicing.
“Lenington,” he said in his hard, angry voice.
“Jack-baby-Burkie!” Then the familiar high-speed delivery began. “That secondhand store fronts a treasury book on Mission off Fifth near the old Remedial Loans around the corner from the Mint in the phone booth one hour.”
Dial tone.
Five large, just to listen. Against that, a setup. The mob? The kraut had assured him he had a plus ledger with them for his efficient handling of his part in the Moll Dalton hit.
The IAD? He takes the phone call in the booth, he gets five large, the bills are black-light or paint pellet, the numbers recorded, dirty money, he’s on his way to the slam. Trouble with that scenario, obvious entrapment by Internal Affairs. With the kraut as his attorney he would walk away laughing, and they’d know it.
Stagnaro?
For it being him, he was a sly fucking fox, Jack had been through the academy with him and never met one slyer. Maybe he wanted to catch Jack dirty, force him to roll over on Gounaris, or worse, the mob. And the tidbit about the treasury book in the secondhand store would fit Stagnaro. Guy got around. Shit, even Jack hadn’t known about that one, or he would have been leaning on the guy himself. Right around the corner from the fucking Mint! Somebody had some balls. Or a sense of humor.
Against it being Stagnaro? Much as Jack hated to admit it, he wasn’t that kind of cop in the first place, and was a hell of a lot brighter than the IAD in the second place, which made him too bright to try that sort of cheap shit in the third place.
So who did that leave who might be trying to get something on him? And meanwhile, seventeen of Jack’s sixty minutes had evaporated.
Should he go there or not?
CHAPTER TWELVE
Fifty-nine minutes after Burkie’s call, Jack Lenington was leaning against the wall of the secondhand store on Mission Street, arms folded, the width of the sidewalk away from the phone booth. At 11:00 p.m. there wasn’t much foot traffic, only a few cars. As his second hand hit twelve, the phone rang. Lenington got it on the second ring.
“Yeah.”
The same rapid-fire high-pitched voice. “What you listen to is this phone ringing every night at eleven o’clock don’t pick up unless it stops ringing and then starts again then pick up on the third ring and answer like you did tonight.”
“What will you want to know?”
“I’ll ask specific questions about Stagnaro’s investigation when I have them to ask and when I do you get ten large if you can answer them or not.”
This guy was really fucking desperate, thought Jack. He started, “Do you know…” then stopped. He’d been about to use the kraut’s name, for Chrissake! “You said something about-”
“Oldest gag in the book, envelope under the phone tray.”
Buzz.
Jack looked around as his hand found the envelope, his fingers felt around it for wires. Nothing. Just masking tape to hold it to the metal.
Nobody coming by right at the second except the god damnedest white nigger you ever saw. Everything was black except his face, and sixties black at that! Fucking dreadlocks down to his ass, stacked heels made him six inches taller, floppy wool green, white, and purple beret, one of those varicolored robes, dashiki or some shit, shades, bopping down the street with a cellular phone pressed to his face.
“My man!” he was shrieking in a high skinny black voice as he went by, “the key is G sharp and the beat is dum-dum-dum-dee-dee-dum-dum-dum…”
He was gone in a cloud of reefer, and Jack had his envelope in hand, into his pocket, was walking away from there.
Jack did everything to the envelope except zap it with X rays, but he couldn’t find anything suggesting a letter bomb. Finally he put it in a pail of water in his postage-stamp backyard overnight. Next morning the manila envelope had disintegrated and the pail was full of soaking greenbacks. A few hundreds, a dozen fifties, the rest twenties, none new, none consecutive. No dye. Wearing gloves, he dried them out with his wife’s hair dryer, took them to Hymie the Handler at the Crime Lab as evidence in a case. Hymie loved to handle evidence of any sort from any source, hence his nickname.
“I want you to subject these to every fucking scrutiny known to man and have them ready for me this afternoon.”
Hymie was a hairy bear of a man in his mid-thirties, muscular and handsome if you liked hebes, not at all like his name. He looked mildly astounded that Jack finally had brought him some evidence, any evidence, of anything whatsoever.
“And for Chrissake keep it under your hat, Hymie. I don’t want anyone to know about these bills except you and me.”
“For you, Jack, anything,” he said wryly. “I’ll even give away my lunch hour to commemorate the day Jack Lenington actually brought in evidence to be analyzed. Must be your first bust, huh, Jack? Congratulations!”
“Go to hell” was Jack’s only comment, so mild because Hymie was, after all, doing him a favor.
The bills were clean as Christ’s conscience.
That afternoon at 3:00 p.m. he mailed them off to the Bahamas, the zip code of the phony return address his account number instead of 94122, and that night at 11:00 he was back in the phone booth ready for more of them. What he knew about Stagnaro’s investigation you could cram up a gnat’s ass, but if Burkie had specific questions maybe he could find out…
The phone rang, went silent, didn’t ring again. Just as well, too many people going by on the sidewalk, made him nervous. So he scanned everybody, damned carefully. No familiar faces. No easy place for a shotgun mike to be set up, record whatever he said, either; but just the same he’d request a face-to-face on his turf if he had any information to give when the time came.
Next night, the same. Nice thing was, he was only at the phone for like twenty seconds. Minimum exposure.
On the fourth night there were no pedestrians on the street at all except the white nigger, who came bopping
