one, begins to read it. Almost immediately, he puts it aside, opens another, then another and another. He puts them all aside. Then he takes the box, puts it on the auction counter to be sold.
It's only when he looks up that he sees that Gus has been watching him all along.
ONE MORNING about a week after the auction, there's a present waiting for him when he comes down for breakfast.
He stands staring at the large package resting on the kitchen table. Gus, in a chef's apron, his fingers white with flour, says, 'Well, go on, kid, open it.'
'It's not my birthday.'
Gus expertly pours four circles of batter into a smoking cast-iron skillet. 'You don't want me t'have t'give it to someone else, do you?'
Jack feels himself being impelled by Gus's words. His fingers tremble as they rip open the paper. Inside is a square box with a grille on one side. He opens the top: it's a record player. Inside are three albums, one by Muddy Waters, one by Howlin' Wolf, one by Fats Domino.
Gus, flipping corncakes, says, 'Life without blues music, now that's a sin. Blues tells all kinds o' stories, the history of the people composed it.'
He slides a plate of corncakes onto the table. 'Eat yo' breakfast now. Tonight we'll listen to these records together. No sense you sittin' all by yo'self on them hard stairs.'
AFTER SIX weeks, Gus decides Jack is ready to observe the backroom deals. The back room is a frigid twelve-by-twelve bunker outfitted with a sofa and two La-Z-Boy easy chairs, between which rests a sideboard on which sits an array of liquor bottles, old-fashioned and highball glasses of sparkling cut crystal. A girl comes in once a day to clean, dust, and vacuum. Gus is extremely particular about the environment in which his deals get hammered out.
Jack fears that these deals somehow involve drug-running because that is one of the businesses Cyril Tolkan is into, and it seems clear to him that Cyril and Gus are rivals. He needn't have worried. The deals are of another nature altogether.
His first day in the back room, Gus tells him, 'All my life I was a outcast, someone who wanted t'be happier'n my daddy, but every time I tried, there was a white man standin' in my way. So finally I gave up, went back here t'my own world where I'm the king of the castle.'
Through the back door of the Hi-Line come a succession of police detectives. Although they all look different physically, they seem the same to Jack's brain: they're hard, flinty-eyed, dyspeptic. To a man, they've seen enough-often too much-of the streets they are sworn to protect: too much rage, too much bitterness, too much jealousy and envy, too much blood. They inhabit a swamp eyeball-deep in organized prostitution, drug smuggling, murder for hire, turf warfare. They have murder in their sleep-deprived eyes. Jack can see it; he can smell it, taste it like the tang of acrid smoke.
They all want the same thing from Gus: shortcuts to turn their perps into collars. They want to make arrests, no fuss, no muss, arrests that stick, that won't blow back in their faces like street litter. This Gus can do, because what Gus trades in, what makes him his living, is information. Gus's castle may be at times too small to suit his taste, but it's populated by a battalion of corner snitches, gang informants he set in place, embittered turncoats, ambitious politicos-the list seems endless.
Whatever these detectives want, Gus usually has or, if not, can get in a matter of days. All for a price, of course. They pay, with reluctance and a show of crankiness. They know the value of the goods.
One of Gus's regulars is a detective by the name of Stanz. His face is as crumpled as a used napkin; his shoulders as meaty as a veteran boxer. His nose is a mess, broken in street brawls when he was Jack's age and never properly fixed. He smokes like a demon, speaks as if his throat is perpetually clogged with tar and nicotine.
Decades on the force haven't dimmed his clothes sense. He opens the button on his smartly tailored suit jacket, lifts his trouser legs fractionally before he sits down on the sofa. He lights an unfiltered Camel, inhales mightily.
'You did good on the Gonzalez thing.' He hands a thick white envelope to Gus. 'That particular sonovabitch won't be making money off coke or anything else for the foreseeable future.'
'We aim to please.' Gus stuffs the envelope in a pocket without opening it. Obviously, he trusts Stanz.
'Speaking of which.' The detective picks a piece of tobacco off the tip of his tongue. 'My boss is on my ass like you wouldn't believe about the deuce murders over McMillan Reservoir.'
Gus frowns. 'I tol' you. I'm workin' on it.'
'Working's not good enough.' Stanz hunches forward, perching on the edge of the sofa. 'These past three weeks my life's been a living hell-no sleep, no downtime-I can't even get my usual tug-and-tickle, for fuck's sake. You know what that does to a man my age? My prostate feels as big as a goddamn softball.'
The ash trembles precariously at the end of his Camel. 'My tit's in the fire, Gus. Three weeks of interviewing, reinterviewing, poring over old cases, canvassing the neighborhood, scouring every fucking trash can and Dumpster for the knife or whatever the fuck sharp instrument was used to kill the vics. I feel like I've run the marathon, and what do I got to put in the report to my loo? What's he gonna report to the chief of detectives? What's the chief gonna say to the commish and the mayor? You see the bind I'm in? All that goddamn pressure has more than a trickle-down effect. I'm the guy where the shitstorm's gonna hit.'
He grinds out his Camel, stands. 'Get me the name of the perp.' He points at Gus. 'Otherwise I'm pulling my business, and where I go everyone else is gonna follow.'
Gus's eyes go hooded, and Jack, feeling the dangerous crackle of heat lightning in the room, involuntarily takes a step back.
Gus says in the lazy voice that Jack has already determined means trouble, 'You been on the force-what? — thirty years now?'
'Thirty-three, to be exact.'
'No.' Gus shakes his head. 'Thirty-three years, eight months, seventeen days.'
Stanz stares, blinking. He has no idea where this is going, the lug. But Jack does, and he can't help smiling a secret smile.
'That's a long time,' Gus drawls. 'Lotta shit piles up in those years.'
Understanding comes at last to Stanz. 'Now, wait a minute.'
'Five years ago, the Ochoa takedown,' Gus continues as if Stanz hasn't said a word. 'Along with the thirty kees of coke, twenty-five mil was found with him, but only twenty-three made it into the police evidence room. Eighteen months ago, a Hispanic down. Forensics found a gun in his hand, but we both know that when you shot him he was unarmed, 'cause you bought the gun from me. And, my goodness, I have the paperwork to prove it.'
Stanz's face is flushed red. 'Hey, you told me-'
'This's a game you don't wanna be playin' with me.' Gus's inner rage has boiled up into his eyes.
Stanz turns away for a moment, gathering himself. At length, he says, 'I'd never threaten you, Gus. You know that, we go back a long way.'
Gus's bulk fills up the space; his rage seems to have sucked all the oxygen out of the room.
Stanz is trying his best not to breathe hard. 'We good now?' he asks.
It looks like he can't wait to get the hell out of there.
EIGHTEEN
IS PETE going to be all right?'
'The doctor says he will be,' Jack said. 'He's been taken to Bethesda Medical. He'll get the best of care.'
Jack had volunteered to drive Chris Armitage home. A fine mesh of sleet slanted down from a pewter sky. The car's tires made a hissing noise as they slithered along the road.
Armitage shivered. 'Until they torture him again.'
'He won't be tortured again.'
'Damn straight he won't.' Armitage was huddled against the passenger's-side window, as far away from
