He have any friends you know of?
He had a girlfriend, for a while.
You know her name?
Nah.
Sarah?
Don’t know.
Was he into drugs?
Serge almost smiled. Didn’t say anything.
Listen, man, I said. I’m a lawyer. I’m not a cop. I’m here right now. I got eyes. Don’t worry about it.
Serge thought about it.
Yeah, he said.
What was he into?
Whatever was around. You know. Tree. Meth. Whatever.
Did he sell?
When he had some money to buy, he’d sell. What he didn’t do hisself.
I’m thinking that wasn’t too often.
You got that right.
Did he and Jules know each other?
Sure. Everybody knows everybody.
Anything special between them? They hate each other? Hang together?
Nothing special I know about.
You know anything about a poker game, a few days ago?
Poker? Shit, no. I don’t play no poker.
Not you. A game that Larry and Jules were at.
Nah.
Anything else you can tell me? I asked. About either of them?
Serge sat and thought. And thought. I rolled my eyes. Pulled another twenty out of my pocket. I placed it neatly on the floor in front of him. He eyed it. He thought some more.
I think they had some kind of a deal going, he said. One day. Once.
What kind of a deal? Dope deal?
I don’t know. Maybe.
Anything you know about it at all?
Nah. Not really. Larry saying something about how they had something going. He was going to get some money out of it.
Some kind of poker scam? I persisted. They going to take somebody for some money?
Could be. I don’t know.
Anybody else you know might know something about it?
Nah.
I asked a few more questions. I didn’t learn anything more. He was a slug. A cipher. He couldn’t even make stuff up if he wanted to.
I got out of there.
The light and air of the outside world startled me. I squinted. My eyes slowly adjusted. I took a deep breath. A whole bunch of tension I hadn’t known was there slid out of me.
Jesus H. Christ, I said to myself. I thought I had problems.
14.
When I got to the White Stallion, Dorita was already there. We compared notes. I told her about Serge. She told me about Sarah.
She’s quite a number, she said. Purple hair. Mouth on her like a rabid carp.
A rabid carp? You’re outdoing yourself.
I’m just getting started.
I was afraid of that.
She talked up a storm. But she didn’t say much.
You must have got along famously.
Have you noticed how pointy these shoes are?
Sorry.
You’d better be.
I am. Truly. Abjectly. As sorry as those shoes are pointy.
That sounds like just about the right amount of sorry.
I like it when things work out like that. Can we get back to Sarah?
I found her in a bar downtown. Ratty couches. Black light. Candles.
Nice.
She was smoking a clove cigarette.
Ugh.
Indeed. She was a little uptight at first. The cops had talked to her yesterday. Seems she wasn’t too happy about that. Not a big fan. Didn’t have anything to tell them. On the other hand, she didn’t have much to tell me, either.
Did she admit to being Larry’s girlfriend?
She didn’t exactly deny it. She didn’t like the word. But she lived with him. Some dank little studio off Delancey Street. She was with him the day he died, earlier on. She didn’t know anything about Jules. Or any money Larry owed him.
Not a whole lot of help.
No, but she did tell me a bit about the guy. Sounded like a snake.
A loser kind of snake.
Not a great snake success. But he was always looking for a scam. Always thinking the next one was going to be the big one. They’d be set for life.
The usual.
Sure. He was talking about how if his parents were rich he and Sarah could pretend he was kidnapped, get a ransom out of them, disappear with the money. But his parents are some kind of farmers or something.
So I’ve heard.
They wouldn’t get far with a goat and some chickens.
I guess they could ride the goat out of town.
Into the sunset. Sure.
I mean, she seemed to find him sort of sexy, in a loser sort of way. I got a bit of S amp;M flavor, from the way she talked about him. He had a mean streak. Had his share of incidents. Big scar on his stomach he said came from a knife fight. Never been arrested, though. Or so she said. Strangely enough, for a guy like that.
What about the poker angle? She know anything about this poker game?
Nothing specific. He played poker. Went off to a game once in a while, usually all night. He’d come home after the sun had come up. Sometimes he’d have a bunch of cash. More often tapped out.
Did she know who he played with?
Just ‘the guys.’ You know.
Not inconceivable that he and Jules had cooked up some kind of poker scam. Ripped somebody off. Made an enemy. Or argued over the spoils.
One doesn’t exclude the other.
Could be either. Or both.
But if it happened, she didn’t know anything about it.
