'It's an oldie but goodie, Diz. Everybody knows it.'
'Who's everybody?'
A shrug. 'The neighborhood. Everybody.'
Suddenly Hardy was all business. He knew that Holiday owned a bar, the Ark, smack in the middle of Thirty- two. Knew it, hell, he'd closed the place the night before. But somehow he'd never considered Holiday as any kind of real source for potential complainants in the Panos matter. Now, suddenly, he did. 'You got names, John? People who might talk to me? I've talked to a lot of folks in the neighborhood in the last couple of months. People might be unhappy, but nobody's saying anything too specific.'
A little snort. 'Pussies. They're scared.'
'Scared of Wade Panos?'
Holiday pulled at the side of his mustache, and nodded slowly. 'Yeah, sure, who else?'
'That's what I'm asking you.' Hardy hesitated. 'Look, John, this is what Freeman and I have been looking for. We need witnesses who'll say that things like this Sephia bust I'm doing today are part of a pattern that the city's known about and been tolerating for years. If you know some names, I'd love to hear them.'
Holiday nodded thoughtfully. 'I could get some, maybe a lot,' he said. 'They're out there, I'll tell you that.' His eyes narrowed. 'You know Nick's his nephew, don't you? Wade's.'
'Panos's? So his own uncle fired him?'
'Moved him out of harm's way is more like it. Now he's working for the Diamond Center.'
'And you're keeping tabs on him?'
'We've been known to sit at a table together. Poker.'
'Which as your lawyer I must remind you is illegal. You beat him?'
A shrug. 'I don't play to lose.'
The Wednesday night game had been going on for years now in the back room of Sam Silverman's pawnshop on O'Farrell, a block from Union Square. There were maybe twenty regulars. You reserved your chair by noon Tuesday and Silverman held it to six players on any one night. Nobody pretended that it was casual entertainment among friends. Table stakes makes easy enemies, especially when the buy-in is a thousand dollars. Twenty white chips at ten bucks each, fifteen reds at twenty, and ten blues at fifty made four or five small piles that could go away in a hurry. Sometimes in one hand.
With his neat bourbon in a heavy bar glass, John Holiday sat in the first chair, to Silverman's left, and two chairs beyond him Nick Sephia now smoldered. He'd come in late an hour ago and had taken a seat between his regular companions, Wade's little brother, Roy Panos, and another Diamond Center employee named Julio Rez. The other two players at the table tonight were Fred Waring, a mid-forties black stockbroker, and Mel Fischer, who used to own four Nosh Shop locations around downtown, but was now retired.
At thirty or so, Sephia was the youngest player there. He was also, by far, the biggest-six-three, maybe 220, all of it muscle. While Silverman took the young Greek's money and counted out his chips, Sephia carefully hung the coat of his exquisitely tailored light green suit over the back of his chair. The blood was up in his face, the color in his cheeks raw beef, the scowl a fixture. He'd shaved that morning but his jawline was already blue with shadow. After he sat, he snugged his gold silk tie up under his Adam's apple, rage flowing off him in an aura.
The usual banter dried up. After a few hands during which no one said a word, Roy Panos pushed a cigar over in front of the late arrival. Holiday sipped his bourbon. Eventually Silverman, maybe hoping to ease the tension, called a bathroom break for himself, and Sephia lit up, blowing the smoke out through his nose. Waring and Fischer stood to stretch and pour themselves drinks. Holiday, quietly enjoying Sephia's pain, had a good idea of what was bothering him. Maybe the whiskey was affecting his judgment-it often did-but he couldn't resist. 'Bad day, Nick?'
Sephia took a minute deciding whether he was going to talk about it. Finally, he shook his head in disgust. 'Fucking lawyers. I spent half the day in court.'
'Why? What'd you do?'
'What'd / do?' He blew smoke angrily. 'I didn't do dick.'
Roy Panos helped him with the explanation. 'They suppressed his evidence on some hooker he brought in for dope a couple of months ago. Said he planted it on her.'
'So?' Holiday was all sweet reason. 'If you didn't, what's the problem?'
Sephia's dark eyes went to slits, his temper ready to flare at any indication that Holiday was having fun at his expense, but he saw no sign of it. 'Guy made me look like a fucking liar, is the problem. Like I'm supposed to remember exactly what I did with this one whore? She's got junk in her purse; another one's got it in her handbag. Who gives a shit where it was? Or how it got there? It's there, she's guilty, end of story. Am I right?'
'Fuckin' A.' Julio Rez, a medium-built Latino, spoke without any accent. All wires and nerves, he'd probably been a good base stealer in his youth. He'd lost the lower half of his left ear somewhere, but it didn't bother him enough to try to cover it with his hair, which was cropped short. 'She goes down.'
'But not today. Today they let her go.' Panos spoke to Holiday. 'They suppress the dope, there's no case.'
'Were you down at court, too?'
Panos shook his head. 'No, but Wade was. My brother? He is pissed off.'
'Not at me, I hope,' Sephia said.
Panos patted him on the arm. 'No, no. The lawyers. Bastards.'
'Why would your brother be mad at Nick?' Holiday sipped again at his tumbler of bourbon.
'He was working for him at the time, that's why. It makes Wade look bad. I mean, Nick's doing patrol for Christ sake. He busts a hooker, she ought to stay busted at least. Now maybe they start looking at the rest of the shop.'
'Judge reamed my ass,' Sephia said. 'This prick lawyer-he had the judge talking perjury, being snotty on the record. 'I find the arresting officer's testimony not credible as to the circumstances surrounding the arrest.' Yeah, well, Mr. Hardy, you can bite me.'
Holiday feigned surprise. 'Hardy's my lawyer's name. Dismas Hardy?'
Now Sephia's glare was full on. 'The fuck I know? But whatever it is, I see him again, he's going to wish I didn't.'
'So he must have convinced them you did plant her?'
Rez shot a quick glance at Sephia. But Sephia held Holiday's eyes for a long beat, as though he was figuring something out. 'She wasn't paying,' he finally said, his voice filled with a calm menace. 'Wade wanted her out of the beat. Most of the time that's intensive care. I figured I was doing the bitch a favor.'
Dismas Hardy's wife, Frannie, cocked her head in surprise. They'd just sat down at a small Spanish place on Clement, not far from their house on Thirty-fourth Avenue. 'You're not having wine?' she asked.
'Not tonight.'
'Nothing to drink at all?'
'Just water. Water's good.'
'You feel all right?'
'Fine. Sometimes I don't feel like drinking, that's all.'
'Oh, that's right. I remember there was that time right after Vincent was born.' Their son, Vincent, was now thirteen. She reached her hand across the table and put it over one of his. 'Did you hurt yourself last night?'
Half a grin flickered then died out. 'I didn't think so at the time. I'm out of shape pounding myself with alcohol.'
Frannie squeezed his hand. 'Out of shape could be a good thing, you know.' But she softened her tone. 'How was John?'
'Entertaining, charming, drunk. The usual. Though he came by the office this morning fresh as a daisy. He must have been pouring his drinks in the flowerpots.'
'So what time did you finally get in?'
'One-ish? That's a guess. You were asleep, though. I think.'
'Aren't you glad you decided to take a cab when you went out?'
'Thrilled. I guess I must have taken a cab back home then, huh?'
