‘A cop?’
‘Take it easy. Don’t panic. He was on the premises somewhere. I don’t know exactly where. He was on top of me, just Like that. I can’t figure it out exactly. The shots, you couldn’t hear twenty feet away. But be come into that stairwell three, four floors above me, like a bat outa hell.’
‘Are you sure it wasn’t the security guard?’
‘Maybe, but that ain’t what he said. He said police. “Stop, police!” That’s the words he used. And he wasn’t wearing no uniform. I still can’t figure it out. Anyways he was yellin’ and runnin’, and I kept on rollin’, out on the terrace there. I was reloaded already when the motherfucker came out. He was ten feet from me once. A young guy in suede jacket carrying some kind of 9mm piece. All he hadda do was turn around once there, and pow, right in the gut. He was in a hurry though. I walked away from it clean. Nobody saw nothin’, nobody beard nothin’, just this fuckin’ pig.’
Worms crawled deep in DeLaroza’s gut. Burns was paranoid and it crept over him, suffocating him like a blanket.
‘Pachinko! opens Monday night. Tuesday you go to Vancouver on my JetStar. That night you’re on your way to Yokohama. Do not worry about the pimp. I’ll take care of that.’
‘Did you take care of that bet for me?’
‘Ten thousand on Dallas.’
‘How about the spread?’
‘Seven points.’
‘Good. So, the wine’s beginning to get to me. Don’t catch your asshole on the doorknob, okay?’
‘Yes,’ DeLaroza said and after he had left the apartment he leaned against the wall and closed his eyes, breathing like a man who bad just run a very long way.
Chapter Fifteen
It was the hour of the ravens and Sharky’s Machine prepared to invade the heart of darkness, seeking among the bookies, gamblers, pushers, strongarms, prostitutes, con- men, muggers and killers, those who could be cajoled or threatened into revealing the secrets of the night people.
Time. Time was against them. The hour was right, but the clock was their enemy. For though Friscoe had joined them (at first reluctantly, then after the discovery of the fingerprints, enthusiastically) they all knew the chase would end with Monday morning roll call. He would not be pushed farther than that.
‘Remember,’ a wise old cop told them, ‘never trust a snitch. They’re lepers. Give a squealer a piece of confidential info, he’ll try to sell it to your partner twenty minutes later. You got to catch ‘em with their hands full, get ‘em on the hook, or needing help, then you can maybe trust ‘em — for at least thirty seconds.’
The wise old cop was Friscoe, who operated on the theory that no matter how experienced his men were, no matter how much they knew, it never hurt to repeat good advice.
The plan was devised in Domino’s apartment: Work fast, dig up what you can, bring in any scraps you get, rendezvous at the Majestic Grill at seven in the morning to begin putting the pieces together.
‘Just don’t waste time,’ Friscoe said. ‘If you gotta lead and it starts to crap out, get off it, move to something else. What we ain’t got, we ain’t got time, see, to beat on any dead dogs. Let’s see what a night’s digging turns up. We ain’t got anybody on base by morning, I say we flush it.’
Barret and Grimm beaded to their respective laboratories. By ten P.M. Twigs had gathered up the remains of the victim in a body bag and moved it by freight elevator and his own station wagon to the morgue, where he eagerly went to work, prying into its vital organs.
Barret, alone in his lab working under a single lamp, pored over the scraps of physical evidence beginning with the little red pill.
The Nosh returned to the OC, there to wire the two fingerprints from the top and underside of the commode handle to the FBI in Washington and to begin filtering out whatever voices existed on Sharky’s tapes.
Friscoe hastily drafted a vice cop named Johnny Cooper and went in search of Tiffany Paris, hoping to begin an interrogation which might lift the veil of the mysterious Domino.
The apartment was sealed. Sharky would return later to check it out. For now, he would go with Livingston looking for information. The time was right.
Papa, who preferred to work alone, quietly went hunting. As did Sharky and Livingston, cruising the night haunts, searching out the weak among the vipers.
Disco music thundered at Papa as he entered Nefertiti, the city’s most hallowed night spot — at least for that week. Two leads had already gone down the toilet. Now he was looking for Leo Winter, a good old boy with an easy grin whose casual charm had dazzled more than one jury. There was only one problem -. Papa had nothing in his pocket. Right now Leo was clean. It would have to be a bluff and Papa was not the best poker player in the world.
The maitre d’, sartorially splendid in a cocoa-coloured tuxedo, stood at the inner entrance to the club, dwarfed by a tall image of the Egyptian queen that stared enigmatically down at the lobby through gleaming emerald eyes. He eyed Papa sceptically, starting at the black tie-up shoes, the rumpled suit, the faded blue shirt, and the outrageous tic which did not go with anything else he had on. His patronizing smile never went beyond his lips.
‘Sorry, sir, full up in there,’ he said. ‘Could be thirty, forty minutes before there’s any room in the bar. You might like to try a little place up the street —,
‘I got a reservation,’ Papa said and flashed his shield.
The maitre d’ looked distressed. ‘is there going to be trouble?
‘1 don’t know. Are you expecting some?’ Papa said and went into the club.
