counter and bought another cookie.
9
The challenge now seemed clear: Find a good woman in this city. Which was not as simple as it first appeared. With all due respect, Commish, nothing is ever simple in police work, nothing is ever uncomplicated.
To begin with, if this woman was, or evenwerestill alive, she could be anywhere in the city, which I don’t have to tell you is a very big city. But more than that, if she was or were still alive, did she evenexist?By Mercer Grant’s own admission, Marie Grant was a phony name, what we call a misnomer. But then again, so were Mercer Grant and his alleged cousin Ambrose Field. I have been a cop for a long time now, so the first thing I did was check the phone books for all five sections of the city…
Wow, that’s just whatIdid, Emilio thought. Well, just Isola and Riverhead. But still.
…and discovered in a flash that there were a voluminous multitude of Grants here, which seemed to be a very popular name, but there were no Mercer Grants or Marie Grants and no Ambrose Fields, either, though there seemed to be plenty of other Fields in this fair city. Which meant that Mr. Grant, or whatever his name was, had been telling the truth, in which case why had he been lying? That is to say, why had he lied about his name and his wife’s name and his cousin’s name? What was Mercer Grant hiding? In addition to all those names, of course. And if he was or were hiding something, why had he gone to the police in the first place?
Well, Emilio thought, for that matter, why are you yourself lying, Livvie? Because there is no Olivia Wesley Watts in the phone book, either. Which Emilio thought was somewhat understandable, though, her being a cop and a woman both. If he himself were or was either a cop or a woman, he wouldn’t have put his name in the phone book, either. In fact, he prided himself on having thought exactly the way Livvie had, on both levels, as a copandas a woman.
On this Thursday afternoon at a little past three o’clock, Emilio sat with Livvie’s report in his lap, his Japanese silk kimono open, his La Perla silk stockings and lace-fringed garter belt exposed where the robe fell loose over his legs and thighs. A frizzy blond wig was sitting on top of the dresser across the room. He would put on the wig and his spike-heeled strappy Prada pumps when he dressed for the stroll tonight. When times were good and heroin was cheap, Emilio earned enough as a hooker to afford nice things like the shoes and the lingerie and all his leather minis and long-sleeved silk blouses that hid the track marks on his arms. Times were not so very good these days. The shortage of heroin from Afghanistan had caused the price of the drug to sky rocket. He hoped the situation was only temporary. Not the war, he knewthatwould go on forever. But if he could find the diamonds Livvie was talking about in her report…
Okay, so stop day-dreaming, man. Get back to it.
What was Mercer Grant hiding? In addition to all those names, of course. And if he was or were hiding something, why had he come to the police in the first place?
In police work—as well you know, Commish—we detectives frequently make use of informers, what we call in the trade snitches. These are people upon who or even whom we usually have something we can hold over their heads. As for example, The Needle is a Jamaican informer who used to be adrug dealer before we busted a posse that had originally operated out of London. In London, young Jamaican males involved in violence and/or drugs are called Yardies—a little known fact, but true. The point is, The Needle ratted out half a dozen of these so-called Yardies when we busted the posse, this in exchange for dropping all charges against him. Temporarily, that is. We still have enough on him to put him away for a goodly number of years, were we so disposed. The Needle knows this. He also knows that if we let it be bruited about that he was the one who sold out the posse, oh dear, he might find himself down a sewer one night with his throat slit. So he is very inclined toward helping us whenever we come calling.
I went calling on him that Tuesday afternoon, shortly after Mr. Grant left the office. What Mr. Grant did not know was that when I asked him to please wait for me in the corridor outside while I checked with the Loot to see if he, the Loot, had any questions he might care to ask, what I was doing in actuality was talking to Barry Lock, a detective who works with me. What I was asking Barry to do was follow Mr. Grant home so that we could perhaps get a true name and address for the gentleman. So when I came back out and told Mr. Grant the Loot had nothing to add to what we’d already discussed, Barry had already gone downstairs and would be waiting for Mr. Grant when he came out of the station house. Mr. Grant didn’t know anything about this, of course. That is why it is called detective work.
Nor did he know that I myself was on my way to meet with The Needle.
The Needle was not so-named because he is tall and thin, which he is. Nor is that his name because he has only one eye, which he has. No, he is The Needle because when he was but a mere youth, he used to run a dope parlor where you could come up and flop while he injected heroin in your arm or sometimes into the inside of your thigh if you were a girl and didn’t want track marks to show for all to see. Also, if he used a thigh, it being so proximate and all, chances were good he might get a little something besides money in exchange for his product, one of the perks of being a dope dealer with female clients. It is not only the Taliban who took advantage of women, you know. I hate to say this, Mr. Commissioner, but I have been in precincts where rookie female cops, nonames mentioned, have had their lockers broken into and their shoes pissed into, pardon my French. It is not an easy life we women lead, cops or not.
Anyway, The Needle is this very tall, very thin, one-eyed but not unhandsome Jamaican individual, if you like Jamaicans, who was in the drug trade long before we busted the Yardieposse, and who—for all I know—is still dealing drugs this very minute. I really don’tknow, and I don’t care. We have enough on him to send him away for a long time as it is, without adding anything else to it, so “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” is my policy. Except that when I ask, The Needlebettertell, or I pull the chain on him.
“What do you know about a Jamaican fellow named Mercer Grant?” I asked.
We were sitting in the kitchen of The Needle’s apartment, which is not too far from the station house and also O’Malley’s, the bar where all of this started. Because if it hadn’t been for Margie Gannon mentioning all that stuff about conflict diamonds, and if it hadn’t been for Mr. Grant bringing up the matter of the Revolutionary United Front, I wouldn’t be sitting here in a basement waiting for somebody to kill me. The Needle’s true and proper name, by the way, is Mortimer Loop. I am told there are a lot of Loops in Kingston. He is a very personable fellow with one annoying habit—well, two if you count his drug addiction. Theotherannoying habit is that he fancies himself to be a rap artist. That is to say, he constantly talks rap.
“Mercer Grant, Mercer Grant, do dee mon be Jamaican? How you laks yo’ eggs, wid some sausages or bacon?”
“Yes, he’s Jamaican,” I said.
He was standing at the stove, cracking eggs for omelets. This was already two in the afternoon, but The Needle had just woken up. He was, in fact, still wearing pajamas. To those not familiar with police work, this may seem unusual, a man in pajamas cooking eggs for a woman wearing beige slacks and tan French-heeled shoes, and a green long-sleeved blouse and a brown jacket, and carrying a nine-millimeter Glock automatic in a tan leather tote bag that matched the shoes when they were not even sharing any kind of personal relationship, the man and the woman. But in many respects, a law enforcement officer is similar to a physician. And so a cheap thief will often feel perfectly comfortable while dressed casually, let us say, in the presence of a female detective dressed for business. Besides, The Needle and I had worked together before, and the pajamas were very nicely patterned with a sort of peony design on black silk.
“And I’ll have sausages,” I said. “If you’ve got them.”
“Sausages,” The Needle said, and then went into another rap riff that carried him over to the refrigerator. “Dee lady want sausages, Dee Needle want bacon. She lookin for a mon she say be Jamaican.” Carrying the meats, he trotted back to the stove again on the heels of yet another rap. “What he do, this mon, do he break dee law? Otherwise, why dee cop, what she comin here for?”
I told The Needle that so far as I knew, Mercer Grant hadn’t committed any crime, but that he had come up
