had connections. Georgie and Tony liked being kept in this state of heightened anticipation, so to speak. Priscilla liked keeping them there. She might decide to send them home as soon as she finished the second pot of coffee room service had brought up, who could say? Out, boys. I have things to do, Sunday is my day off. Or maybe not. It depended on how she felt ten minutes from now.
'I know she had money,' she said out loud.
The boys turned to look at her. Bookends in black silk. The sheet lowered to their waists, Priscilla sitting there naked, breasts exposed. The boys made sly eye contact across her.
'Your grandmother, you mean?' Georgie asked.
Priscilla nodded. 'Otherwise, why'd she keep saying I'd be taken care of?.'
'How about taking care of this a little?' Tony had glanced down at the sheet.
'She the one lived in the rat hole on Lincoln Street?' Georgie asked.
'Take care of this a little,' Tony said, impressed by his earlier witty remark.
'She meant when she died,' Priscilla said. 'I'd taken care of her when she died.'
'How?' Georgie said. 'She didn't have a pot to piss in.'
'I don't know how. But she said she'd take care of me.'
'Take care of this a little,' Tony said again.
'Maybe she had a bank account,' Priscilla suggested.
'Maybe she left a will,' Georgie said.
'Who knows?'
'Maybe she left you millions.'
'Who knows?'
Tony was thinking these two had just escalated an old lady's empty pisspot into a fortune. 'There are two old people in a nursing home,' he said. 'The man's ninety-two, the woman's ninety. They start a relationship. What they do, he goes into her room, and gets in bed with her, and they watch television together with his penis in her hand. That's the extent of the relationship. She holds his penis in her hand while they watch television.'
'Don't you ever think of anything else?' Priscilla asked.
'No, wait, this is a good one. The woman is passing her girlfriend's room one night she's ninety years
old, too, the girlfriend and lo and behold, what does she see? Her man is in bed with the girlfriend. They're watching television, she's holding his penis in her hand. The woman is outraged. 'How can you do this to me?' she wants to know. 'Is she prettier than I am? Is she smarter than I am? What has she got that I
haven't got?' The guy answers, 'Parkinson's.'' 'That's sick,' Priscilla said, laughing. 'But funny,' Tony said, laughing with her. 'I don't get it,' Georgie said. 'Parkinson's,' Tony explained.
'Yeah, Parkinson's Parkinson's, I still don't get it.' 'You shake,' Priscilla said. 'What?'
'When you have Parkinson's.'
'She's jacking him off, 'Tony explained. 'So what was the other one doing?' 'Just holding him in her hand.'
'I thought she was jacking him off, too.'
'No, she was just holding him in her hand,' Tony said, and looked across at Priscilla. 'Which is little enough to ask,' he suggested pointedly.
'I'll bet all that money is still in her apartment,' Priscilla said.
At that moment, a knock sounded on the door to the suite.
Jamal knew something the cops didn't know and that was where Yolande had been at what time. She had called him around five-thirty in the morning, told him she was just leaving the Stardust and would be home soon as she caught a cab. He'd asked her what the take
was and she said close to two large, and he told her hurry on home, baby, Carlyle's already here, wait up for you. So from the Stardust to the alley on Sab's and First would've taken five, ten minutes most, which would've put her uptown at twenty to six a quarter to six, depending on how long it took her to find a taxi. Never mind the time in the corner of picture: 07:22:03. All Jamal knew was that had been there almost an hour and a half before that. But who'd been there with her?
Jamal knew the nighttime city.
He knew the people who frequented the night.
He kissed Carlyle goodbye and went out into the glare of a cold winter morning.
He didn't have to go very far.
Richard the First had bought six bottles of Dom Perignon, and he and all the other Richards had already consumed three of them by eleven-ten that morning. Or at least that's what black Richard thought. What he didn't know was that the other three Richards weren't drinking at all, but were instead laughing it up while one or the other of them took a walk to the bathroom, back and forth, emptying glass after glass of champagne behind his back, dumping down the toilet bubbly that had cost $107.99 a fifth. The idea was to get Richard drunk. The idea was to drown him.
What the bellhop delivered to Priscilla's suite was a plain white envelope with her name written on the front of it. She recognized her grandmother's frail
handwriting at once, tipped the bellhop a dollar, and immediately tore open the flap of the envelope.
A key was inside the envelope.
The accompanying notes in her grandmother's hand, read:
My darling Priscilla,
Go to locker number 136 at the Rendell Road Bus Terminal. your loving grandmother,
Svetlana.
Priscilla went to the phone, picked up the receiver, and dialed the front desk.
'This is Priscilla Stetson' she told an assistant manager. 'A letter was just delivered to me?'
'Yes, Miss Stetson?'
'Can you tell me who left it at the desk?'
'A tall blond man.'
'Did he give you his name?'
'No, he just said to be certain it was sent up to your suite. Sort of.'
'What do you mean sort of.' 'Well, he had a very heavy accent.' 'What kind of accent?' 'I have no idea.'
'Thank you,' Priscilla said, and hung up.
'What the hell is this?' she asked aloud. 'A spy movie?'
The white man who approached Jamal the moment he came out of his building was named Curly Joe Simms,
and he ran a book up here in Diamondback. Jamal knew him because every now and then he would have a girl for a horse, so to speak, asking Curly Joe to put two bills on a nag as an even swap for an hour with one of his girls. Jamal never ran more than two girls at a time. And nobody underage, thanks. He knew they escalated from a class-A misdimeanor to a class-D felony if:i person promoted 'prostitution activity by two or more prostitutes' or 'profited from prostitution of a less than nineteen years old.' He figured a judge go easier on him if he didn't have say, five, six girls in his stable, ha ha. Anyway, even two girls were a handful, and to tell the truth, he got tired of them soon and was always on the lookout for fresh talent.
Curly Joe was bald, of course, and he wore earmuffs on this frighteningly cold morning, hands in the pockets of a brown woolen coat buttoned over green muffler, his eyes watery, his nose red. He had not been waiting for Jamal, but when he spotted him coming out of his building, he walked right over.
Janm, he said. 'It's me.'
Jamal recognized him at once, and figured he was looking for a piece of ass.
'How you doin, man?' he said. 'Good, how you been?' 'I'm survivin,' Jamal said.
'Cold as a fuckin witch's tit, ain't it?'
'Cold,' Jamal agreed.
'Was that your girl last night?' Curly Joe asked.
'Got herself juked on St. Sab's?'
'Yeah,' Jamal said cautiously.
'I thought I recognized her from that time.'
'Yeah.'
