to the squadroom with a whole bundle of phony names and a diamond chip in his front tooth…
“Oh, dee man got a di’mon, should be easy to fine. Is he tall, is he short, is he five feet, nine?”
I told The Needle that Grant was more like six-one, six-two, a tall angular man with a light complexion and a trim little mustache under his nose. I told him that Grant wasn’t even his real name, nor was Marie his wife’s real name, who by Tuesday would be dead, anyway, by her own estimate, which was today.
“So the wife be dead, but her name ain’ Marie. And the husband ain’ Grant, so what you want from me?”
“What do you know about conflict diamonds?” I asked him.
“Is he link to the war in Sierra Leone? Or he movin dee ice by his self all alone?”
“I have no idea. He told me his wife was gone, and then he asked me if I’d ever heard of the RUF, which stands for Revolutionary United Front…”
“You think she got whacked by the RUF?”
“Well, that crossed my mind. But…”
“Cause they mean mothah-fuckers, and I rather be deaf.”
The Needle forked strips of bacon out of the frying pan, and placed them on paper towels. Then he dropped four links of sausage into the sizzling bacon fat, and went back to stirring half a dozen eggs in a bowl. On the range, several squares of butter were melting in a second frying pan. The Needle dropped two slices of bread into a toaster on the counter top. I was beginning to work up an appetite.
“I was thinking of writing a cook book,” I told him. “Livvie Watts’s Recipes, how does that sound?”
“Shitty,” The Needle said, and didn’t go for a rhyme.
“Kay Scarpetta wrote a cook book,” I told him.
“Who dee fuck be she, what she mean to me? Would you lak some coffee, shall I brew some tea?”
We had breakfast, or lunch, or brunch, or whatever it was at a small table near a window that overlooked the street below. I could hear the sounds of little girls skipping rope downstairs. I could see pigeons flying from the rooftop across the way. It was springtime in the city, and the sausages and eggs were delicious. Even as The Needle promised me he would look for the elusive Grant and his missing, or perhaps already dead wife…
“Have no fear, I go on the ear. A mon with a di’mon, his wife ain’ Marie. I hear what I hear, I see what I see.”
…I had not even a glimmer that I would soon be placed in a situation that would test me in ways I’d never dreamt I’d be tested. Little did I know that the clock had already started ticking and that the fate of the world was hanging in the balance, not to mention my own fate.
But I’m getting ahead of myself.
You’re not going too fast for me, honey, Emilio thought. You’re giving me clue after clue. If I don’t find you by Sunday, I’ll eat my rhinestone-studded thong panties. You have just told me that your informant is a tall, thin, one-eyed Jamaican who is known as The Needle, big surprise, but whose real name is Mortimer Loop, which is probably not his real name, either, they are so fuckin cagey, these people. But let’s take a look in the phone book, anyway, just to verify, as they say.
Not to Emilio’s great surprise, there were no Mortimer Loops listed in either of the two directories he owned, but there was a Henrietta Loop who sounded interesting, and also a Loretta Loop, who sounded like Henrietta’s twin sister though their addresses were different. He wondered why Livvie would be using a fake name for her informant, but perhaps that was to protect herself in case her report got into the wrong hands before it was delivered to the commissioner. Emilio had no intention of delivering the report to anyone engaged in law enforcement. All he wanted to do was find that basement where all the diamonds were, give Livvie a big kiss of gratitude, and then leave for Rio de Janeiro.
Toward that end, he called a friend of his who used to be a bartender.
IN OLLIE’S NOVEL, his stool pigeon was a razor-thin, one-eyed Jamaican named Mortimer Loop, alias The Needle. In real life, this was a white man named William “Fats” Donner. Ollie had changed Donner’s name and description for fictitious purposes and also because he did not wish to get sued later on by a fat junkie snitch.
In fact, Donner was not merely fat, he was Fats. And “Fats” was “fat” in the plural. Fats Donner was obese. He was immense. He was mountainous. He also had a penchant for young girls and Turkish baths. In his novel, Ollie had changed these character traits to a fondness for cooking and rapping. He figured this was literary license.
On Thursday afternoon at three twenty-seven, Ollie found Donner at a place called The Samuel Baths, on Lincoln and South Twenty-ninth. The Baths had been named for a black faggot named Albert Samuel, who had made his money running a numbers game, and who needed a place where his fruity friends could gather to jerk each other off. Ollie didn’t think Donner was gay. He figured he came here only because, unlike Stockholm, there was a paucity of steam baths in this town. He was sitting now with a towel draped across his crotch, sucking in steam, thick layers of flesh quivering all over his sickly white body. He was altogether a somewhat disgusting person who did perverse things with twelve-year-old girls, but this was the big bad city and Donner was a very good informer. Sometimes you had to make allowances.
Ollie came in with his own towel and took a seat beside Donner on the wooden bench. Together, they looked like a pair of giant white Buddhas. Steam swirled around them.
“I’m looking for a hooker named Emmy,” Ollie said. “Blond hair, big tits. Ring a bell?”
“Most hookers these days got blond hair and big tits,” Donner said.
“Not the Puerto Rican ones,” Ollie said.
“Ah, we’re closing in,” Donner said.
“You know her?”
“Only what you just told me, dad. Blond, big tits, a spic. What part of town is she working?”
“She hocked a Gucci dispatch case in a pawnshop on Ainsley and Fifth. Broker’s a guy named Irving Stein.”
“No last name, this chick?”
“Stein didn’t ask for one. It was a two-bit transaction,” Ollie explained. “I’m looking for the case, too, if you get anything on it. A fat lady bought it from Stein.”
“Does she have a name, this fat lady?”
“No.”
“How fat is she?”
Not as fat as you, Ollie was tempted to say, but didn’t.
“She looked like an opera singer,” he said. “White. Brown hair, brown eyes.”
“Let’s get back to the hooker, dad. Not many of them work that stretch of turf. Is it possible Emmylivesnear the pawnshop?”
“I don’t know where she lives. And besides, Stein told me he getslotsof hookers in there.”
“I’m only saying that ain’t a stretch they normally stroll, man. You talking Hookerland, try Mason Avenue.”
“Are you telling me lots of hookerslivenear Ainsley and Fifth?”
“Lots of hookers live everywhere in this city. Most of ’em don’t eat where they shit, though, is all I’m saying.”
“Then why’d Stein tell me he gets lots of hookers in his shop?”
“Maybe he does.”
“Who live in the neighborhood?”
“It’s possible. Lots of them big old buildings used to have Jewish families in them, the ones south of Ainsley?”
“Yeah?”
“Could be hookers in them buildings now.”
“The queen could be king, too, if she had balls,” Ollie said.
“I’m only tryin’a zero in, dad,” Donner said. “If I can get a bead on her territory, maybe I can find her for you. Where’d she get this dispatch case?”
“She stole it from a parked car outside King Memorial.”
“Ah-ha!” Donner said. “Now you’re talkin, man. That’s hooker turf, the King area. Lots of events there, lots of white men on the town uptown, lookin for bars, lookin for black pussy, spic pussy, now you’re talkin. Let me go
