Safe House

“An old pal of mine makes them down in Honduras. Cuban seeds, Cuban artisans, but he says Cuban soil is all played out. These are better.”

“Sure are,” Davidson said, holding the dark cylinder at arm’s length to admire the shape. Then he got back to work. “One guy pulls a gun, the other one pulls a knife. One gets a jury trial, the other gets an autopsy. Self- defense. It happened in a bar, we walk. But your guy, his story’s shaky. He was just strolling through the alley at that hour, minding his own business . . . ? I don’t think so.”

“And we don’t know if the other guy’s pistol was still there when the EMS crew arrived,” I told him.

“Yeah,” he agreed, nodding his head. “We’d get that on discovery, but if it comes up blank . . .”

“Anyone could have picked up the piece and walked off with it,” I told him. Thinking of the dead man’s wallet and watch.

“Forensics?” Davidson asked. Meaning: fingerprints, blood splatters . . . anything the police-lab vultures could vacuum from a corpse.

I flashed on what the Prof had said about that same question: “Blood don’t tell no more, Schoolboy. We ain’t gotta worry about that. A good shyster can always O.J. the DNA.” I scratched my temple, like I was thinking about it. “Nothing,” I told him.

“It’s still dicey,” Davidson said.

“So you advise—what?” I asked.

“Your guy got a sheet?”

“Long one.”

“For this kind of thing?”

“Oh yeah.”

“He a predicate?”

“Twice over.”

“So he couldn’t take even a Man Two,” Davidson mused. “No way to bring him in and make a deal.”

I didn’t say anything. Manslaughter Second Degree is a Class C Felony in New York. Even if Davidson could sweet-plea his way past the life sentence a Habitual Offender tag would bring, Herk was looking at seven and a half to fifteen.

“You got any more cards?” Davidson asked.

“A witness,” I told him. “He’s not a hitter, but he’s no citizen either.”

“Would he roll?”

Would Porkpie turn informant? It wasn’t even a question. The Prof had dismissed any other possibility with a contemptuous snort: “That punk ain’t no real thief, chief. You know the way he play—don’t do the crime if you can’t drop a dime.” He was right: give Porkpie a pass on one of his own cases, he’d sell his mother.

Then again, so would I.

But I’d never sell my family.

“Sure,” I replied.

“Well,” Davidson said, switching to self-protective legalese, “given the facts of the hypothetical with which you’ve presented me, I would advise absolute discretion.”

Meaning: Herk couldn’t come in.

Only two ways to tap Porkpie’s home phone—take a major risk or use up a major favor. And even if he had a phone in that pesthole he lived in, he probably wouldn’t use it for business. He was a weasel, but not a stupid one. “Got to send Clarence in,” I told the Prof.

“No way, Schoolboy. I told you true—my boy don’t work for Herk.”

“Look, Prof. The only place we know we can possibly get to this girl Porkpie told us about is at Rollo’s, right? If Porkpie’s there, he spots me in a second. You too. Max can’t negotiate. Who’s that leave us?”

“I don’t feature no undercover crap,” the little man said, giving ground grudgingly.

“Clarence goes in, he hangs around, okay?” I said, pleading my case. “He spots Porkpie talking to the girl . . . spots any girl who matches the description . . . he steps back, makes a call. The rest is ours.”

“The whole motherfucking thing should be ours.”

“What’s the problem?” I pressed him.

“Bad juju, youngblood. We ain’t fucking detectives,” he said, jeering the last word. “We don’t solve crimes—we do ’em. Maybe Herk should just relocate his dumb ass to some fresh green grass.”

“What good’s that gonna do? He tries to make a connect on strange turf, he’s just gonna end up back in jail.”

“But no fear if he stays here?” the little man challenged.

“Okay,” I said, throwing up my hands in surrender. “Fuck him. Let him fall.”

The Prof looked at me a long quiet minute. Then he said: “Guess I taught you even better than I thought, son. Two weeks, all right? We put it together by then, good. If not, Herk’s gotta walk his own way.”

I bowed my head in agreement.

“Rollo’s is an old-time thief’s bar,” I told Clarence. We were sitting in my booth at Mama’s a little before midnight, drawing the diagrams. “I been in there a few times over the years. Little round tables in the middle, booths against the wall. Lousy food, watered booze. The tables are for bragging and bullshitting, the booths are for deals. You got something you want to buy or sell, you take a booth. Waitress comes over, you order food, she’s gonna tell you the booth’s reserved. You get stupid, say you wanna eat there anyway, guy they call T.B. comes over. I don’t think that’s his initials—man’s bad enough to be named after a disease, you don’t mess with him. Tall, slim build. Nice looking kid, long knife-scar across his face below the left eye. He’s a kenpo man, snap you like a twig without breaking a sweat. So no Bogarting in there, got it?”

“Yes, mahn. It is clear.”

“But if you ask the waitress, ‘Where’s Mimi tonight?’ she’ll just walk away, no problem. Then you’ll get Mimi. A real pretty Latina. Watch her hands: long nails with black polish, gold wedding ring. You tell her what you want, just work around the edges, you don’t have to come right out with it. No drugs, but anything else is all right. She says okay, you give her a hundred. That’s the rental.”

“I tell her firearms, mahn. I am known for this a bit. From when I was with Jacques.”

That’s when I first met Clarence, a long time ago. When he was a young tiger working for a Jake gun-runner in Brooklyn. He hadn’t come up with the rest of us, but he’d been forged just as hard in another fire.

“That’ll do,” I assured him. “I got a crate of AK’s I been holding back to sting one of those dumb-fuck gangbangers, so we could show the goods if anybody wanted a checkout. Now what you gotta do is dance, brother. Make sure you string it out, stay as long as you can, set it up so you come back a couple of times, right?”

“I have it,” the young man said. He was wearing a black jacket—looked like a regular suit coat, but it came down almost to his knees—over a pale-violet silk shirt buttoned at the neck. Clarence doesn’t really peacock it up until the warm weather hits, clothes blooming with the foliage.

“You know who to look for?”

“Porkpie, you already described him, mahn. And a Chinese girl with one of those pillbox hats, like. And a veil.”

“She may not be Chinese, not Chinese like Mama, anyway. Oriental, though, if Porkpie was right. And we don’t know if that outfit is a trademark or she just wanted to hide her face. Porkpie’s the key. No way he stays away from Rollo’s for long. You got any questions?”

“Who will watch my ride, mahn? I do not like to leave her alone in some nasty parking lot, you know?”

“We’ll cover her,” I promised. Clarence’s beloved British Racing Green 1967 Rover 2000 TC was his prize. He took it for granted that we’d have his back at Rollo’s, but his car was a separate commitment. “We can’t go inside, but the parking lot’s no problem.”

I lit a cigarette and smoked in silence, thinking it through. Rollo’s wasn’t a dangerous place. They had to keep it under control to do their business. But still . . .