beginning to rise out of his stomach.
'What the fuck difference does it make?'
'Oh, Timmy! Timmy!' The ache was curling around his chest. 'I defended you, remember? I broke Dakin for you. Christ!'
Timmy sneered. 'Oh, yeah, I forgot!' He coughed, then smacked the table with his fist. 'Do I remember? What the hell do you think?' He glared at Janek, eyelashes flickering, his eyes watery and bloodshot.
'We both know Mendoza had his wife beaten to death. We know he ordered Clury killed. How he did it, who he hired, how much he paid, the fuckin' details-who cares?'
'Christ!'
'You keep saying that! Don't '!' me, partner! You think law enforcement's a kid's game where winning's less important than playing by the rules? No cop worth his salt thinks like that.'
Janek wanted to hit him then. Instead he just stared.
Timmy didn't look away. 'You're telling me you faked the evidence.'
Timmy laughed. 'Am I? Would you believe me now whatever I said?
Think it through. If you really believe I faked that note, you also have to think I had that old bat, what's-her- name, Komfeld, knocked off, too.
Like maybe I personally raped the cunt and stole her ratty silverware.
Sound like me, Frank? Hub?'
Timmy took a draft of beer. The foam clung to his lips.
'You'd also have to believe Dakin isn't a psycho, Mendoza's pure as snow, and I'd risk everything, my pension, my whole fuckin' life, to close out a case because… why.? I couldn't handle it? You have to believe the five grand I supposedly used to pay for the money order to Metaxas's mom came out of-what did Dakin say? Dough I took off of some coke dealer he couldn't name? I can't remember all the crap he tried to sling at me.' Timmy paused to wipe his mouth.
'Wanna know something, Frank? At this point I don't care. Hear what I'm sayin'? I'm sick of it! The whole fuckin' mess. You wanna try and get to the bottom of it, go ahead. Spend the next ten years on it if you want to. You won't get anywhere. Kit won't either. But be careful. Because if by some fluke you happen to stumble into the real heart of the thing, something bad might befall you' Personally speaking, I'd feel real sorrowful if such an event should come to pass,'
'The real heart of the thing '-what the hell does he mean by that?
Janek stared into Timmy's eyes. 'Is that a threat, Timmy?'
Timmy's hands were trembling. 'Me threaten you? You gotta be kidding.'
'Then, what're you saying?'
Timmy's eyes focused down to rivet points as he met Janek's stare.
Suddenly he laughed. 'Oh, hell! Do what you want. Nothing I say's going to stop you, is it, partner?'
With that, he set his palms on the table and slowly pushed himself to his feet. He towered over Janek for a moment, then turned his back and stumbled toward the door. Just as he reached it, he turned again, squinted and peered back at Janek through the gloom. Then he laughed a final time, a loud, high-pitched cackle Janek had never heard from him before. Then he stumbled out into the street.
Janek was still shaking when he met up with Sue in front of the Seventeenth Precinct on East Fifty-first. It was eight o'clock, the sky was dark, and he was exhausted from a day that had begun at dawn with one maniac and finished in the afternoon with another. Dakin, Timmy-they're both crazy. Fuck '! Forget about '! Get on with your lovely, lonely life!
However, the sight of Sue's glistening eyes and ardent, youthful face revived his faith in his fellow cops. He thought: At least there're a few not tainted by that stinking case.
'Stiegel's in a bar on First Avenue,' Sue told him. 'He was getting annoyed sticking around, so I told him to go get a drink.' She paused.
'I don't think you're going to like him much, Frank.'
They walked three blocks to the bar. It wasn't what Janek expected. He knew some of the places in the neighborhood, overpriced Yuppie hangouts, but the one Stiegel had chosen was the crummiest of all-smoky, noisy, with a special aroma that told Janek it was a haunt for alcoholics.
Sue pointed out the detective from the door. Stiegel had the kind of sloping body that always reminded Janek of a big piece of fruit. His hair was crew cut and his eyes were tired. He sat alone at a small table nursing a bourbon, inhaling deeply from a cigarette and staring vacantly at the wall. As Janek approached he felt like an intruder, catching another man in an unguarded moment. While Sue introduced them, he studied Stiegel carefully. There's no bottom to this guy, he thought.
'I heard of you,' Stiegel said. Janek nodded. He noted that Stiegel spoke in a hoarse whisper, a cigarettes- and whiskey voice. 'I heard you were down in Jamaica working on that Medina thing.'
'Mendoza,' Sue corrected him.
Stiegel nodded. 'Yeah… right.' Then he brightened. 'Either you guys wanna drink?' Janek and Sue shook their heads. Stiegel shrugged. 'I'm off-duty, so what the hell.' He swallowed a mouthful from his glass, set it down carefully, pushed his cigarette into an ashtray, then sat back ready to talk. 'Sue tells me you want a rundown on the bad girls. I don't know much-just they pick up guys in hotel bars, drug ', roll I em and write on '.' Stiegel grinned.
'Carlson wasn't picked up in a hotel. But his complaint got slotted to you.'
Stiegel shook his head. A curl of smoke from the half extinguished cigarette wrapped his face like a veil.
'You know how it is, Lieutenant-you luck into something couple of times, all of a sudden you're the Department expert.', 'Sure, I know how that goes.'
'Thing is, I got maybe seventy, eighty open cases, of which less than a dozen are bad-girl deals. A caseload like that, I can't worry too much about guys let themselves get rolled.' Stiegel leaned forward. His eyes turned canny. 'Still, I put it together. The victims give different descriptions but the MO's always the same. I figure there's a ring of '.
' girls,' I call '.' He laughed. 'Not bad, huh?'
Janek glanced over at Sue; she rolled her eyes. Stiegel, Janek knew, was just the sort of third-rate detective she most despised.
'So, who are these bad girls?' Janek asked.
'Beats me, Lieutenant.'
Sue tightened her lips to show disgust. 'Just let the cases pile up, that it, Detective?'
Stiegel shrugged. 'What else can I do? I send the victims over to the artists unit. Makes ' feel better. Helps ' get it off their chests. Not the writing, but the shame.'
'You must have found out something,' Janek said. 'What about the body writing? What'd you make of it?'
'That's the best part, isn't it?' The canny eyes again. 'See, most of the marks are married and from out of town. I think the girls're only interested in out-of-town married guys. Then, after they take them down, they write on ' like you said. I've seen some weird stuff since I started taking these complaints. There's this one Oriental girl, she writes on the guys in Chinese. The others write in English, but they end up saying the same stuff.'
'Which is?'
'Insults-'Asshole,' ' face,' ',' like that. There was this one mark, the girl wrote on him, ' cock's so small I couldn't find the worthless thing.'
' Stiegel laughed. 'Surprised the guy had the guts to file a complaint, but he was so mad he was willing to take the ridicule.
Anyway, that's when I figured out why they write on them the way they do.' 'Which is-?' Sue asked.
'To make the mark think twice about reporting it. Way I figure, he's got enough to do getting the writing off. The girls use indelible ink.
You got to scrub yourself raw to get it out. And then I asked myself, how does a guy explain something like that? Does he say to the wife:
'Gee, honey, I was up in my hotel room having a little drinky-poo with this whore when she dosed me out and wrote this awful thing around my nipples'?' Stiegel shook his head. 'I don't think so. Do you, Lieutenant?'
'Seems unlikely,' Janek agreed.
