‘How, uh, did you get on to this?’ Sharky said finally.
Livingston smiled. ‘Believe it or not, a snitch.’
‘One of the johns?’
Friscoe shook his head. ‘Naw, don’t I wish? You think any of these bimbos gonna say anything, put their balls in the wringer? Shit, no. It was this old campaigner we call Mabel the Monster, been street trickin’ must be ten years now. Her heels are so round she has to hang on to the lamppost keep from fallin’ over backwards. What happened, back there late in November we bad some kind of religious convention in town. Shit, on Saturday night we had about a thousand Jesus freaks runnin’ all over town screamin’ and hollerin’ like a grizzly bear with his nuts caught in the door jamb. So, about seven o’clock the goddamn switchboard lights up like it’s the Fourth of fuckin’ July and then The Bat calls in, and the chief, and finally the commissioner himself. It seems the whole Peachtree hooker line turned out in force. Musta been, we counted thirty-two pros working the two blocks between the Regal Hotel and the Towers. So we go over, drop the hammer on about twenty of ‘em, and poor old Mabel turns up in the line-up. Usually, see, she’s quiet as a lamb. She’s been nailed so much she oughta be payin’ rent down at the pound. Only this night, Jesus, we had a fuckin’ maniac on our hands. So Papa there, he takes her in the backroorn, waltzes her around a bit, and turns out she’s pissed, see? She says we’re pickin’ on the low-renters and turning a deaf eye on the high-rolling ladies. For a while Papa can’t get anything specific outa her and then he oflers to let her walk, she gives him something we can hang our hat on, and she comes up with a name and address. Bingo, we got Tiffany.
‘We figure, the last three weeks or so, we got — how many, Arch? — ninety-one phone calls on tape, eighty per cent is jobs. She’s turnin’ four tricks a week at five and six bills a pop and you gotta figure it’s at least a hundred g’s a year, tax free. Still, still misdemeanour, but, you know, big misdemeanour. Worth workin’ on. Then three days ago, we turn up this take I’m gettin’ ready to play for you. Now it’s a new ball-game because we got what looks like a shakedown. A fat one. And that’s a felony extortion, baby,’ Friscoe smiled and licked his lips.
‘Also,’ Livingston said, ‘we got a joker popping up in the deck.’
‘We’ll come to that in a minute,’ Friscoe said.
‘Wouldn’t the IRS love to get a piece of this action?’ Sharky said.
Livingston cringed. ‘Wouldn’t they though? And fuck it up for everybody else, as usual.’
‘All those assholes are interested ia is their own chunk of the kiwash,’ Friscoe said. ‘They don’t give a diddly shit about anybody or anything but their own shit-ass little backyard. They’re as much help as a broken leg.’
‘Maybe we could lean on Tiffany, get to Neil. He knows everything that’s happening,’ Sharky said.
‘You’re jumping the gun,’ said Friscoe. ‘Just listen to this here take. There’s a lot happening. We move too soon now and we could blow the whole machine right down the fuckin’ toilet, believe me. Just hook an ear on this.’
He turned on the recorder.
LIVINGSTON: This is tape PC-74, tape recording of a telephone conversation between the subject, Tiffany Paris, Suite 4-A, the Courtyard Apartments, 3381 Peachtree Street, Northwest, December 15, 1975, three-thirty-two P.M., and a male caller identified as Neil, n.l.n.
Click.
TIFFANY: Hello?
NEIL: It’s me.
TIFFANY: Oh, thank God, T was afraid it was —
NEIL: Hey, calm down, calm down.
TIFFANY: He came by here, no call, no nothing, just showed up at the door. Anybody could have been here. My mother —
NEIL: I said calm down. It’s taken care of. It won’t happen again.
TIFFANY: But it never happened before. . . it was like that. . . terrible little man following me that ti —
NEIL: Bag it, Tif.
Friscoe turned the machine off for a moment. ‘That bit there. We think what happened, some john probably took it on himself to bypass Neil, call in person. Blew her mind, see.’
‘What’s that about somebody tailing her? Was that one of your people?’ Sharky asked.
‘No. We haven’t figured that one out yet. Anyway, moving along here we get to the meat.’ He switched the machine back on.
NEIL: Listen to me. I talked to him, eye-to-eye, read him the facts of life. It won’t happen again, believe me.
TIFFANY: It really upset me. The man that was following me that time, the one in the leather jacket, I know he was a cop and —
NEIL: He was not a cop. He was some shit-ass little conman looking for a buck. Besides, he vanished, right? When’s the last time you saw him?
TIFFANY: He was following Domino, too, Neil. She told me —
NEIL: Shit!
TIFFANY: I still think Norman sent him. He was so angry and he made those threats.
NEIL: Norman did not send him. And Domino’s forgotten about it. Norman’s back in Texas, playing with his oil fields. Drop it. Now, I mean it.
‘Here we go,’ Friscoe said, ‘now listen close.’
TIFFANY: He told me, he was going to do something to my face. You try forgetting something like that.
