“Well,she was, I guess. It’s not everybody gets eaten by lions.”
“What do you suppose she was doing in the lion’s cage?”
“I have no idea. I only talked to the lady once in my entire life.”
“Youdidn’t have anything to do with …”
“No, hey,no,” he said, “I’m a burglar!”
“Yes,” she said. “So I’m beginning to understand.”
Their food arrived. She was thoughtfully silent for a while. Then she said, “So, if you were me, what would you do here?”
“What do you mean?”
“Wouldyou go to bed with you, knowing you’re a burglar? Or would you eat your dinner and go home like a nice little girl?”
“You could do both,” Will suggested.
TIGO GOMEZ was getting very nervous.
Wiggy had just told him that the man who was on his way here was the very same person who’d strapped this tape recorder to his chest—“That’s just great,” Tigo said—none other than Detective Oliver Wendell Weeks of the Eighty-eighth Detective Squad.
“You maybe seed him aroun the streets,” Wiggy said. “Fat Ollie Weeks. He’s this big fat guy.”
No kidding, Tigo thought.
The problem was that Wiggy thought he’d be doing a favor for the police, when allthey wanted to do was send him up for Murder One. The further problem was that Tigo couldn’t warn the man how dangerous this fat hump was because then he’d have to reveal that he himself had visited the police to ask for a favor of his own by way of a cash reward, and they’d wired him tight as Dick’s hatband, which is why he was sitting here this very minute, still attempting to get information he could use as a bargaining tool when the Law arrived and the shit hit the fan.
“You goan tell him you a drug dealer?” he asked.
“No, I don’t have to tell him that.”
“Then how come youknow these people are sellin dope up here?”
“I coulda heard.”
“Howyou could a heard, Wigg? You goan tell the fuzz this man Hoskins come up here Christmastime, sold you a hundred keys of coke to distribute to li’l kiddies in the streets?”
“No. But I could …”
“You goan tell ’em you shot this man Hoskins back of the head an dropped him in a garbage can? You goan do that, Wigg?”
“I’m say in it don’t seem right, what these mothahs are doin to our people.”
“They’s evil folk in this world,” Tigo said, “itis a shame.”
He was thinking Jerry Hoskins may have brought that shit up from Mexico and sold it to Wiggy, but Wiggy was the one passin it down the line till it got to his “people” in the streets. And hestill hadn’t said one damn word about the Christmas Eve murder. Tigo was about to prod him again, get this show on the road here, nem mine feelin sorry for all the drug addicts in this sorry world of ours, when Wiggy said, “You know what the name Nettie stans for?”
“Nettie, you say?”
“N-E-T-T-I-E,” Wiggy said, spelling it out for him. “You know what word that name is hidin’ in?”
“No, I has to admit I do not,” Tigo said.
“Counterfeit. That’s the word. You search that word, you find Nettie lurkin in there. You double-click on her name, you transported straight to Nettieland. You want to hear this, man, or you want to stay ignorant the ress of your life?”
Tigo did not want to hear anything but how Wiggy had killed Hoskins—but neither did he wish to remain ignorant the rest of his life. He nodded wearily, and listened as Wiggy began telling him all about his adventures in Nettieland. Gradually, he began to lean closer. Gradually, his eyes opened wide. He was listening intently, his attention completely captured, when all at once he heard footsteps pounding in the hallway outside. He turned toward the front door. An instant later, he heard the sound of rapid gunfire, and all at once the door flew off its hinges.
At that very moment, Steve Carella was turning his car into Decatur Avenue, never once realizing he was about to meet another lion.
TIGO WAS RUNNING FOR the window even before the two blond ladies burst into the room. Somewhere behind him Wiggy screamed in pain. Tigo dove through the glass head first, came through onto the fire escape in a cascade of shattering shards, heard more firing from inside the apartment.
“The window!” one of the women yelled, but he was already on his feet and charging down the ladder. The iron rungs were crusted with snow, slippery underfoot. He almost lost his balance, almost went over the rail, but continued running, sliding, slipping, almost flying down those steps while above him the blondes were on automatic, bullets kicking up snow everywhere around him, clanging against the iron of the fire escape. He jumped the dozen feet or so to the ground, began broken-field running across the back yard, the blondes still firing, and was climbing the fence between this yard and the next one over, when they finally found the range. He heard wood splintering everywhere around him, and then felt slugs ripping across his back as he came over the top of the fence. Another slug ripped through his right hand. He dropped to the ground, zigzagged toward the alleyway alongside the building, tucking his bloody hand in against his body, cradling it, blood leaking onto the white snow from his hand and his chest as he ran.
