‘So Domino was not in on it.’
‘I don’t know how to say it, but she was a very classy lady. I don’t think she’d get her hands dirty in that kind of action.’
‘Shit, she’s. . . she was a hooker, Leo.’
‘You asked me, I’m tellin’ you. If I was making book on this question, I would give odds she didn’t know a thing about it, and if she did, she would have given Dantzler the long goodbye.’
‘Could she maybe have found out about it and given Dantzler some trouble?’
‘I see where you’re goin’ with this. Let me tell you, this Dantzler’s got balls the size of a blackhead. Phony paper, pyramids, pimping, that’s his style. He don’t have the guts to step on an ant — or ask anybody else to. Anyway, even if he had it in mind, you know, he would have known to run it past me and I would have kicked his ass all the way to Alabama for even thinking about it. No, you can scratch Dantzler. He might be able to tell you why he thinks it was done, but he didn’t have a thing to do with it. That’s my opinion.’
‘So I end up exactly nowhere.’
‘No, you end up with a travellin’ hit man on your hands. If you want to come down on Dantzler, it’s going to have to be for something else.’
Papa nodded. ‘Okay. I want you to do this for me. I want you to listen around and if you hear anything, anything about this gambit., you give it to me. And if you hear anybody outside the Vice Squad askin’ questions about Domino or Dantzler or any of that crowd, you get on the horn to me.’
‘You want me to let you know if I get pneumonia from standing out here?’
‘You wanna run around half naked that’s your problem.’
‘Okay, but I got another problem.’
‘I’m listening.’
‘I got married a couple of weeks ago. Maybe you heard.’
‘You got a problem all right but there ain’t anything I can do about it.’
Leo laughed again. ‘It ain’t her, it’s her brother. He got dumped for running a red light and they turned up two lids of reefer in the car. It was strictly for personal use. The kid doesn’t push dope.’
‘Two ounces for personal use?’
‘So he smokes a lot, what do I know? He’s twenty. You know how it is when you’re twenty. You don’t do anything in moderation.’
‘You need to have a heart-to-heart with the kid.’
‘I already did. What it is, they hit him with felony possession.,
‘Anything over an ounce, the law says you’re pushing.’
‘Look, the kid’s okay. Anyway, I only been married a month, I’d like to give the old lady a little delayed wedding present, know what I mean?’
‘This kid’s first time out?
‘He got caught in a little bust here about a year ago. A bunch of kids were selling tax-free cigarettes they brought in from North Carolina. They must have cleared all of twenty bucks.’
‘Careless son of a bitch, isn’t he?
‘He’s not real bright.’
‘Okay. I got a pal just off the Narcs. I’ll talk to him.’
‘Whatever you can do.’
‘I can maybe work it out for a suspended sentence. He’ll have to do about six months probation or so, cough up a couple of yards for the fine.’
‘That’s okay. Maybe a little probation’ll straighten him out. I can handle the fine.’
‘Okay, Leo, we got a deal Just keep in touch. Keep your ear close to the ground for the next forty-eight hours or so.’
‘That’s cool.’
‘And forget you heard anything about Domino from me or anybody else.’
Leo’s eyebrows rose. ‘Who’s Domino?’
A harsh chilling wind had replaced the rain, turning dirt in the gutters into dervishes as Livingston cruised down the dark streets. Beside him, Sharky stared silently through the windshield, his mind assaulted by nightmare demons — the what ifs and maybes, all the ways he might have prevented Domino’s death. In the brief time he had seen her, talked to her, listened to her make love to another man, in those few hours she had touched a place deep inside him nobody had ever touched before. He knew it was crazy. But it was a reality he could not escape and the reality tortured him.
‘Okay,’ Livingston said after several minutes of silence, ‘what the hell’s eatin’ you?’
The question shook Sharky back to the present.
‘All of it,’ he said. ‘The whole thing.’
‘Got to kick that monkey, m’friend.’
