“Nope.”
“When’d you get here?”
“Bout an hour ago.”
“He wasn’t here?”
“Nope.”
“He come back, you tell him I’m lookin for him, okay?”
“Peace, brother,” Thomas said.
My ass, Tigo thought.
Next place he tried was Wiggy’s barber. This was a man named Roland, who cut mighty fine hair and also took in numbers on the side. Or vice versa. Tigo figured Wiggy might be here gettin a trim, New Year’s Eve comin up and all. He could use a trim hisself, matter of fact. Roland said he hadn’t seen hide nor hair—
“You get it?” he asked.
—of Wiggy since a week ago today when he last cut the man’s hair.
“Try L&G,” he suggested.
L&G was short for Lewis and Gregory, who were two brothers owned a haberdashery on Chase Street. Both brothers were there when Tigo arrived at eleven that Friday. The shop was packed with people returning ties, and shirts and shit they’d got for Christmas and had no use for. Greg told him he hadn’t seen Wiggy since before Thanksgiving, was the man all right? He usually came in here and splurged two, three times a year. Tigo told him Wiggy was fine, just’d been busy was all. Greg said, “Tell him I said happy new year, hear?”
“I’ll tell him,” Tigo said.
He was wondering had Wiggy vanished from sight?
This business, vanishing from sight was always a distinct possibility.
He tried a bar called the Starlight, which was already doing very good business at a quarter past eleven, two days before New Year’s Eve. Tigo could just imagine what the place would be like on the big night itself. But John the bartender told him he’d seen Mr. Wiggins on Christmas night, when he was sittin here at the bar hittin on a blonde who’d come in out the cold, and again just yesterday aroun this time.
“Is that so?” Tigo asked. “A blonde?”
It was too bad the tape recorder wasn’t turned on because first it missed a hair joke from Wiggy’s barber, and now it just missed a thickening of the plot with Wiggy working a blonde on Christmas night. He told John if Mr. Wiggins came in again to tell him he was lookin for him, okay, and then—so it shouldn’t be a total loss—he tossed off a shot of Dewar’s before he went out into the cold again.
It was beginning to snow.
No snow for Christmas, but now it was coming down to beat all hell.
Tigo looked at his watch. It was twenty minutes past eleven. He didn’t know where to go next.
He tried the pool hall on Culver and Third, but nobody there had seen Wiggy, and then he tried The Corset Lady on South Fifth, which was run by a foxy chick named Aleda who made very fine ladies’ underwears and who used to go with Wiggy, but not for six months or so now, but she hadn’t seen him and didn’tcare to see him, thanks. Then he tried the First Bap on St. Sab’s because believe it or not Walter Wiggins was a religious man who went to church every Sunday, but the Reverend Gabriel Foster hadn’t seen him since, in fact, last Sunday, had anything happened to him? Foster was always looking for something that had happened to anybody in the black community, some cause he could champion on his radio show, some put-upon black he could go march to City Hall about. Tigo was beginning to think maybe somethinghad happened to Wiggy. This business, things happened.
He finally tried a man named Little Nicholas, who did business out the back of a laundromat he owned and operated on Lyons and South Thirty-fifth. Little Nicholas was about five-feet, eight-inches tall and Tigo guessed he weighed something like three, four hundred pounds. What Little Nicholas did was sell guns. He told Tigo that Wiggy had been in there late last night, and had purchased a beautiful submachine gun called the Cobray M11-9, would Tigo be interested in seeing some very fine banned weapons and silencers that had come in from all over the nation only yesterday? Tigo asked had he seed Wiggy anytimetoday? Little Nicholas said No, he hadn’t had the pleasure.
It was a quarter to twelve.
The snow was coming down pretty hard now.
Tigo wondered where the fuck Wiggy could be.
WIGGY WAS SITTING at Halloway’s computer up at W&D. One of the Mexicans—he guessed it was Ortiz—came out of the conference room where they were holding the staff, and asked him shouldn’t he be going for the money soon? They had already decided, after some sound reasoning from Wiggy, that he should be the one who went for the cash, in case there was any language problem, not that he meant to be disparaging. He looked up at the wall clock now. It was only twelve noon, and Halloway’s accountant had advised them to allow a half-hour to get there for their one o’clock appointment, which meant there was still plenty of time before him and Halloway had to go out into what looked like a full-fledged blizzard.
“I got time yet,” he told Ortiz, or Villada, or whoever the hell he was.Whoeverhe was, Wiggy planned never to see him or his partner ever again the minute he got his hands on that money.Adios, amigos, it was very nice knowing you.
Meanwhile, there was some very interesting information on the W&D computer.
CARELLA AND MEYER were having lunch in a diner on Culver and Eighth, not far from the station house. Meyer was eating a salad and drinking iced tea. Carella was eating a hamburger and fries. Meyer told him that just two days ago, his wife had told him they should go buy him some clothes for the new year.
“She said we’d have to go to a shop forlarge men, was what she called it. I said, ‘Why do we have to go to a large men’s shop?’ She said, ‘Because we won’t find anything to fit you in a regular men’s store.’ I said, ‘Hey,
